


Mirrored Heart

by spaceOdementia



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, BAMF Tifa Lockhart, Blood and Violence, Character Development, Cloud is a knight, Cloud is definitely going on a quest, Courage, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Elemental Magic, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Growth, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Heart, Help, High Fantasy, Humans vs. Magic, Lots of monsters, Magic vs. Magic, Multiple Villains - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Cloud Strife, Protective Tifa Lockhart, Romance, Strength, Tags Are Hard, This is going to be an ENDEAVOR, Tifa is a princess, Tifa is so powerful it really should be illegal, Trials, What Have I Done, What Was I Thinking?, What am i even doing any more, Worldbuilding, power
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29015697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceOdementia/pseuds/spaceOdementia
Summary: Only a human can save the Reckoning. Only a knight can puzzle a princess back together.Cloud Strife is a knight, his sole purpose to be sent to the magic king in hopes of being chosen.Tifa Lockhart is a princess, broken into pieces and locked away in different parts of the magic world. It was for her protection, they had said. It was to save her magic from the beginning of a deadly Rot. Now, as the humans are desperate for help against the disease, the magic weakening and increasingly corrupt, it is Cloud's turn to stand before the magic king. He must state his sacrifice. He must undergo his test.It is a day that will change his life, and the world, forever.
Relationships: Cloud Strife/Tifa Lockhart, Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 100
Kudos: 104





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> HI HI HI. I'm so happy you're here. Thank you for trying this story out. <3  
> Let me start by saying that I've never done anything like this before. To be honest, this story has been in my mind for a while, now. I've been attempting to write it in bits and pieces, but the ideas have hooked me deep. It is totally, completely AU, it's definitely a journey, and it'll be a challenge. Which is a good thing, right? Eh.
> 
> Thank you forever and ever amen to [ Somebodys_Nightmare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somebodys_Nightmare), for stoking the flames of this, for the endless encouragement, and the outrageous support. I love her to pieces, just like Tifa is in this story. PIECES. Tell her how much you love her, too. She's too good for this fandom. 
> 
> Also, I am thrilled and floored to say that this [art commission](https://twitter.com/SPYKEEE1945/status/1354502544098095106) was done by the glorious [Spykeee](https://twitter.com/SPYKEEE1945) from Somebodys_Nightmare for this story. (LISTEN WHEN I SAY SHE IS TOO GOOD FOR ~~ME~~ EVERYONE). I cannot tell you how many hours I've stared at it. I hope to live up to the expectations of its beauty. Send Spykeee love, too, he's a literal gem of a human being. 
> 
> Anyway, happy reading! All thoughts, comments, ideas are highly encouraged. I absorb them all into my soul.

_Once upon a time._

A lot of fairytales begin in similar fashion. Once upon a time...there was a princess. A prince. A villain. A conquering. True love against the wrath of evil. Prevailing and winning. When hope and courage are on their last legs, dwindling and dying, a triumph occurs in the last moments. 

The power of the spirit.

Cloud has always loved the idea of a hero. Saving a maiden from the clutches of despair and lost hope, ending the chaos and destruction of evil.

Insofar, he’s aspired to be like the heroes he’s read about. He applied. He went to training. He achieved the coveted golden badge pinned forever to his skin. Now, marked for the rest of his life, he will always be considered and known as a hero. 

Throughout all of that, he never expected to be here, kneeling before the almighty King of the Reckoning, housed at the end of the world. 

At least, at the end of the human world. 

“Sir Strife,” the king says. “You are yet another contribution from the human world. Each and every one of you have suffered from inadequacy and a distinct lack of perseverance.” He lords over Cloud and his throne, the armrests embroidered in gold and diamonds. It sparkles underneath the luminescence of magic that surrounds the entire room. 

The magic chokes him like a noose. It is thick and suffocating and unlike anything the Academy has described. Upon entry, Cloud had felt very unprepared. 

It was laughable. His entire life had been focused on preparation and readying his capabilities. He had thought it humorous and ridiculous. What had the Academy been for, if not to give him the most important and prosperous education? What has his time toiling away and fighting and learning been for, if not feeling improperly armored for the stare of an immortal king and the power exuded, rolling outwards in waves, sitting before him? 

There’s something eerie in the air. Cloud realizes this must be the magic. It mixes with his fear and his diminished courage. Were it not for the large broadsword strapped to his back or the silver plated crest bordering his torso, or the greaves on his thighs, Cloud would feel very vulnerable indeed.

“What would you offer that your other brothers-in-arms sorely lacked?” the king demands. “What is it about you that would give me the hope you could save my daughter?” 

Cloud has prepared for this question. He knows his answer, and it gives him a brief instance of confidence. 

It is not for lack of trying, nor is it from lack of want. He is here for one singular reason.

“I have nothing to go back to in the human world,” he says. “I do not require the sacrifice my brothers are unwilling to give.”

“We shall see if this is true,” the king answers, looking unimpressed. He waves his hand in front of him. “So tell me, knight, what will you pay?”

The currency of their world is not weighed in gold. Their monetary value lies in a specific brand of item. They feed off of intangibles, like hope and vanity. They gnaw in pieces of skin and bone. They love the salt of feelings and emotions, sweat and tears and blood. They are of spirit currency. In the human world, they are still attached to superficial things money can buy. The weight of a person is determined in the quantity of change in their pockets, the land they hold, and the children they conceive.

Cloud glances up from his position, kneeling before the king. He takes in a breath and stares into the black eyes settled deeply into the sockets of one of the most powerful immortals in the world. 

“My memories,” he says. It will be a significant loss. He knows it will be. He’s thought about it time and time again, but it’s for the best. He hasn’t been the same for two years, now. He doesn’t think much will change without them. He’s been so entrenched in training, so focused on this one possibility, he doesn’t think losing pieces of himself will matter. 

In fact, it might even help him. Grief has been immeasurable. He thought about using that—his grief, specifically. But what is more cowardly than erasing grief and sadness in order to continue on with living? _No,_ Cloud thought. He couldn’t use that. He _can’t_ use that. As much as he would like to be rid of the loss, he is required to live with it. To remember the despair and the abyss of it. Without the sensation of his failure, he doesn’t think his purpose would benefit anyone, much less a magical princess locked away in pieces.

The king sits back in his throne, looking mildly surprised and, if Cloud can read him right, a little intrigued. “Memories, you say?” he asks. “Whatever would you need to lose your memories for?” 

The king is a suspicious man. It is not unwarranted. He’s had to be suspicious for over one hundred years at the very least. Humans are greedy beings, always looking for ways to heighten their ambitions and their status. They are born to gain things for their own measures. Over the years, the king has tried to be swindled, stolen from, made for fool, and slighted. Cloud has heard the stories. They were all fools, in his opinion. What made humans think that they could get away with something so childish in front of someone who has experienced life for centuries? He’s never had the inkling or the impetuousness to think his nineteen years of living could achieve anything near the magic of the king. 

But many have tried. Some have tried very, very hard. Some have lost what they offer up, _forever_. Cloud’s human king, King Shinra, had been one of these fools. He had lost his eyesight. He had tried to give up beauty. “Beauty is the thing I love the most,” he had been cited to say. He had failed to pass the test, and because of his failure, the king stripped his eyesight. He would never again see what created beauty. He could no longer see colors, smiles, sunlight, stars. 

A generation later, his son, Rufus, tried. He offered up vanity. Everyone’s opinion of vanity is different. He loved himself. Ego and conceit was his weakness, and he fully embraced it. In the end, of course, he lost what he thought was the most beautiful thing in the world. His face. It is smudged, now, bruised, broken, and scarred. It is not as lovely as it once was. Or what people had _thought_ was lovely. Cloud never knew for sure. He always thought Rufus was an ugly son of a bitch. 

Cloud thinks about his failure two years prior. If he can’t withstand the trials and tribulations this king has to offer him, what will he lose? What else will the king take away from him besides the scenes of his life in the memories? The worst of it, Cloud thinks, is that he’ll lose who he is. After everything that’s happened to him, losing some of himself doesn’t rightly bother him. Perhaps, it might even help him.

This is where the inherent selfishness of humans comes in. Whether he wins or loses, he’ll still get part of what he wants. He’ll forget. 

Taking another deep breath, Cloud says, “I will lose my memories to cope with my loss. That’s all.”

“I see,” the king answers, his intrigue suddenly nullified. “You are weak then,” he muses. “You would rather lose memories to move forward than to grow from them.”

Cloud breaks their eye contact. It is hard to swallow his pride, even now. He wonders how he still _has_ pride. What would you have to do to lose it? Even after all of it, he still clings to it like it’s the only thing he has left.

“Yes,” Cloud answers, staring at the gleaming marble floor. Its luminescence is markedly different than human marble. It’s imbued with something. Cloud wonders about the magic of this place. He thought it would be overwhelming. In fact, he knew it would be. He’s been told so many times that he wouldn’t be able to handle it, but he went through the courses. He’s been told time and again what it would feel like and what it would do to him. 

It’s strange, how the sensations aren’t anything like they said it would be.

“An admitted coward here to come save my darling daughter,” the king announces to the empty room. But it must not be empty. Chitters and giggles creep out of the walls. They crawl up Cloud’s neck and slide through his hair like fingers. It is _eerie_. M _agic is eerie,_ he thinks again. Cloud glances around him, thinking he might not be able to see everything this world has to offer. Are there people watching? Are there individuals or animals? Talking goblins? Imps? Terrifying little demons? Elves and witches and warlocks, all with pointed ears? Are there feathered and winged humans and long-limbed giants?

The king answers his own question with a chortle. Cloud averts stare to the ground.

“I will say,” the king begins again, placing his chin in his palm. He leans against the right side of his chair. “None of the other volunteers have admitted themselves so openly so soon. Is this a strategy? Is this one of your plays? Did your human king tell you and coach you on what to do?” He mulls over his words, not waiting nor seeming to expect a reply. “Surely he did. You are all a sniveling and conniving species. Why else would you still be trying to secure parts of my land? So desperate are you to weasel your way into my kingdom.”

The most humorous and perhaps saddest part about all of this, Cloud knows, is that humans are the only one who can _save_ the magic. The rest of the magical beings are unable to unlock the fragments of their broken princess. It has been tried and tested, and wholly unable to come out victorious. 

It’s poetic in a tragic kind of way. Cloud has wondered about this. It all started from the beginning, when a magic Reckoning fell in love with a human. Did they know what they would do for the future generations? If only they could see what grievous circumstances they would bring upon each generation after them. How much grief. 

The king will never admit to _his_ mistake. He will never admit to being at fault. It was the humans, he had said. _They made this happen. They made me do this._

He will never admit to losing control. He will never say he was in the wrong to break his daughter in halves and quarters. He will say he protected her, and he has said it. Over and over and over again, he protected his daughter from the fatal traps of the human corruption. _When I was at a loss, when the pollution of rot took over the world, I would not allow the magic of our kingdom to be tainted by a human disease._

“What a world this could’ve been,” King Shinra had said, just as repetitively as King Lockhart. “What a world this could have been had we united together. So many lives could’ve been saved, so many would not have suffered from the torrent of disease. How _dare_ the magic king for abstaining against help and charity.”

It’s easy to paint the magic king in a bad light. King Shinra isn’t so much better. He will plead that he did all he could. He will say he imprisoned himself in the castle while people died, to save face. Anyone with a brain or a modicum of intelligence knows that he was afraid for his life. He tried to save the magical princess once before. He tried and he failed, and he could only _hear_ the cries of the people, and the wet, deadening coughs, and smell the drenched and thickened air of the infirmaries. His vision gone, he could not visualize the true horrors. But he could imagine, with all his other senses heightened from the loss of the one.

They didn’t call it a plague. They didn’t call it much of anything. It was more a draining of lives. Age ran a quicker course. Bones became brittle sooner. Skin turned papery and leathery in months versus years. Bruises became internal bleeding. Things once so easily stoppable had become uncontrollable. What once was so easy to contain became unrelenting. It had been a terrible century, with the last ten years becoming worse and worse. The sickness had only evolved and kept evolving. It was a fog of death. It did not choose one person over another. It ravaged the communities, families, friends, babies, elderly. And while the magical king held back from helping because his daughter had been trapped and broken and fragmented, by his own hand no less, it did not stop his glee over watching the human race struggle to survive.

They say the magical Reckonings are not evil. Cloud thinks this to be untrue. He believes they _are_ malicious, potentially deadly if you cross them on a bad day, and completely worth every ounce of an alliance. Half the reason Cloud wants to do this is because of the power they have. If there is one chance at creating an agreement, just one chance at creating something good between them, he thinks it is worth it. Besides, magic or not, they are similar. Whereas every human isn’t good, every magical Reckoning can’t be bad. As he stares up at the picture of the lovely princess who is now fractured and disintegrated, he believes in her. It might be because of the stories, of how history has painted her to bias him towards this belief, but if she made her father so protective of her, enough to shatter her entire being to _shield her_ from human corruption, Cloud thinks that she must be one hell of a girl. Perhaps she is a girl worthy enough to save, and she is deserving of him to try—even if he’s a failure, and even if he can’t save the ones he loves. What is there to do but try?

She is smiling in her portrait. She looks happy. Her eyes sparkle, a shade just lighter than blood fresh from a wound. Her skin is porcelain, shining like the marble of the floor. She exudes an aura of magic. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. It’s not true for all of them. 

Hers is worth more.

The king notices his glance. “Enamored, are you?” he says. There is an edge of pride in his voice. “Most men are when they walk into this room. They change their minds, and they suddenly have a bout of magnificent bravado. Sometimes, they change their tune. They change what they give up. Will you?”

Cloud’s eyes dart back to the king when he starts speaking. He swallows. 

“No,” he says. “I won’t. What I give up will always be the same, take it or leave it.” He expels a breath. He’s nervous. He knows the king can smell the stench of anxiousness scattered all along his skin. His palms are sweating inside his metal gloves. There’s something about this room. His stomach is starting to ache. His nerves are beginning to burst, not just his anxiety, but his sensation. His fingertips burn. His throat feels like it’s lit on fire. It is slow. A slow progression, so gradual he hasn’t even realized it until now. As the king looks down upon him with his hardened stare, Cloud feels more, and more, and more.

“Hm,” the king harrumphs. “Say what you like, knight. I feel your heartbeat racing. I can smell your palms sweating. What are you hiding? Or are you merely afraid of me?” 

Cloud swallows again. He thinks about lying, but it lasts for only a split second. The king sees through lies. They’re like a flashlight in the darkness. They’re so obvious and quick, a sudden dash across the eyes. One so obvious would be exactly like that for the king here, in this moment. 

Cloud is not good at lying. A seasoned liar could do much better than he. He doesn’t chance it. He opens his mouth to speak the truth. 

“Yes,” he says. “I am afraid.”

The king sits back in his throne once again, looking over him with something akin to interest.

“It seems the human king trained you a bit better than the others,” he says. “That is not a lie. That is true. What different breed of character are you from the others? Your name is synonymous with sadness. Is that why they chose you to come today?”

His questions sound sincere. Cloud can only shrug. 

“That I cannot say,” he says. “I am just like the rest. It’s a lottery. My name was pulled the day before yesterday.”

The king rubs a hand over his mustache, falling into his goatee. It is black just like his eyes. It shines, sleek with color as saturated as the onyx of night.

“Well,” the king says at length. “The worst that you can do is fail, just like all the rest.” He inches forward in his seat. “I am looking forward to watching what you’ll do next. If you pass this trial I’m about to give you,” he says. “I will strip you of your memories and you will be on your way.” The king begins to grin. It is a slice across his face, like a cut across the inside of a palm. It opens up to white instead, his teeth gleaming under the lights of the room. They are straight and perfectly aligned. It isn’t human, so it is not surprising he is perfect. 

“If you fail this trial I’m about to give you,” he says. “I will take away half your mind. You will become a puppet. Memories are what make us, don’t they? Memories and feelings, emotions, all of those pretty things you humans take for granted. Experience always builds character. I have lived a long time,” he says, pausing for a moment. “Long enough to build this character and long enough to build experience. You have lived a mere inch of my life. Yours is still in its infancy, so arguably, you will lose next to nothing. Are you ready to proceed?”

He says it with a casual progression. It is said with the bland tone of fact, as if he has rehearsed it several times before. Cloud is not surprised by this either, but it is almost an insult to hear his life having been made of _nothing._

What is surprising is that for the first time all afternoon, Cloud is unafraid. He is suddenly certain. This is it. It is what he’s worked for, what he strived for, and what he thinks will be his undoing no matter the outcome.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m ready.” 

“Very well,” says the king. His grin is still in place, welded on his face. “Then let us begin.”

The room shifts. The colors convert all their luminescence and bright lights in white and cream and gold into darkness. It becomes gray, black, and the putrid color of yellow. It is not what Cloud expects. He’s ready for monsters. He’s fought so many of them before. He knows strategy, knows how to swing his sword around. Where he is not good with words, he is good with action. He grits his teeth. He squints his eyes as if it’ll help him see.

In the end, he doesn’t have to use his vision. What occurs is unanticipated. He’s not sure why he’s so caught off guard. Nothing here has been what it seems to be, nor has it been what he’s practiced or dreamed. How do you prepare yourself for the unexpected? It is impossible. He can only exist and prepare for the changing moments. Unluckily for Cloud, he hates change. He hates everything about this.

A small globe of light appears from the recesses of where the throne had been standing a moment ago. It swells around him as if it is slowly swinging on a gentle breeze, like a leaf in autumn. It begins to hover above his head, and he stares after it. His hand goes to the hilt of a sword strapped behind him, prepared for action. He waits for the glow to turn into something ugly and unrefined, something magical and destructive. He waits for it to open its jaws and eat him alive. He waits for something nasty, like a multitude of little swords to peek through its orb, to slice into his skin, ending him then and there. 

What happens is the opposite. The orb is glowing in a hazy, unfocused glimmer, and it is very bright against the vast darkness of the room. It is suspended in the air for a moment before it swirls around him from one shoulder to the other. Cloud watches it as it swims around him like a fish. He can’t make out what’s inside of the orb. It simply looks like a ball of light. It doesn’t make a sound, and it doesn’t transform. Cloud feels like it’s watching him, observing him, altogether surveying him like a piece of art in a gallery.

It circles to the front of him, right in line with his eyes. It nearly touches the tip of his nose. Cloud is uncertain of what to do. He can only watch it, tense and waiting, his hand tightening on the hilt of the broadsword. And suddenly, without warning, the little ball of light sinks down and melds into his chest. It is like a shock in his system. It’s a rupture. It shakes him, like hands on his shoulders, rocking him violently. He thinks it’s some kind of eruption inside of him, his organs splitting in two. That’s what it feels like. It feels like he’s dying, hearing the rush of blood in his ears. His palms become sweaty again, but he’s not sure if that’s ever left him. His eyes close from the force. His lungs rattle in his chest. Like everything else today, he’s unsure of what’s happening. He doesn’t like it, and that’s the only thing he’s been certain of all day. _He doesn’t like it_.

Eventually, the internal quaking is over. The light moves in front of him again, and he realizes he’s breathing so heavily, as if he’s fought hordes and hordes of field monsters. His limbs are shaky, his arms trembling, his knees aching in their kneeling position. His hair is drenched with sweat, and he is cold and hot all at once. It is like he has broken a fever, like he’s ran through a sickness in record time. He feels like he hasn’t eaten in days. He wants to vomit. He wants to spit. The globe settles before him, and it doesn’t have eyes, it doesn’t have a mouth or nose or anything substantial to call it something sentient, but it _feels_ like something. It feels like something alive. It is only Cloud’s instinct, now, that holds onto his awareness. 

It twinkles in front of him, as if it wants to show him something. Before he can get his wits about him, still struggling to keep from keeling over from all of his trembling, the light flies up and back towards where the throne used to be and then it vanishes, extinguishing into the darkness. Cloud’s not sure what happens after that. He can’t tell if he’s still upright at all. What he knows is that he is very tired. He wants to go to sleep. He thinks he might do just that as his hand falls from the hilt of his sword. _I want to sleep,_ he thinks. _I’m so exhausted. Why am I so exhausted?_ The rest of the light disappears from the room, and Cloud suddenly knows nothing else.

It feels as though he slept for a year when he wakes. He’s staring up at the ceiling of the throne room. He knows he’s in the castle, because he’s greeted by the exquisitely ornate and delicate painting splashed across the ceiling. It holds the lines of winged beings, swirling around one another in a rainbow of color and feathers. 

It took his breath away the moment he walked in. And it takes a breath away the second his eyes open.

“Cloud Strife,” the king bellows somewhere above him. Cloud jerks, his body moving on its own accord. He rolls on his side, tries to stumble into a kneeling position. He glances up, his eyes still groggy with sudden sleep and fatigue. Bleary around the edges, his vision begins to clear as he finds the king. He still sits in his throne, but his face looks agitated and concerned. He nearly looks hesitant, and it is a very unsettling look on his face. Cloud’s legs continue to shake, but he manages to remain in one place.

“The trial has passed,” he says, his voice low and deadened. “You have survived. You have lived. And you will continue to live.”

He slowly stands from his throne, and Cloud sees him at his full height. He is broad shouldered, skin tight around muscle. He looks like a human. It is nearly as unsettling as the look on his face, his eyebrows pinched, his mouth in a curled snarl. He glances to the side, the same ball of light hovering a mere foot away from him. Cloud has not noticed or seen it before, but he can now acknowledge the orb’s presence. It is so light and translucent that it’s almost completely camouflaged with the surroundings. It shimmers, effervescent and nearly bubbling against the gleaming of the room. The king looks down upon Cloud, his body rigid and his knuckles white. 

“You have passed,” he says. “Now, you will be burdened with the price of your memories. Everything from your childhood to your adolescence up to your purpose for this journey will be gone. You will know your name, you will know what makes you, and you will know why you are performing this trial. However, you will know nothing else.” He narrows his eyes. “You will have distant recollections of a time once past, and you will feel the flutterings of your grief, happiness if you ever felt it, joy, elation, and any other emotion you might have felt in the life you lived. But now, your focus is to be here, the past behind you, and the only way will be forward. Do you understand?”

Cloud blinks, taking in his surroundings once more. Everything the king says is true. He thinks back to his life, his childhood, his friends he once had, his training…and his training, he remembers. He remembers the rigor, the toiling, the calloused hands, the ripped skin and the bleeding scabs. He remembers the rain on his face in the training grounds, he remembers falling off his chocobo. He remembers breaking his nails when trying to climb the rock wall. As he kneels before the king in front of him, the purpose is heightened and resounding. He still feels a great ball of guilt. He does not feel much else. Happiness and joy and all the other emotions he’s felt before are distant things. They are like whispers of smoke along the air.

Clouds eyes hook on the light to the left of the king. Something about it calls to him. It feels like the ruptures it has made inside him are now stuck together like glue. As shaky as his legs are and as cold and wet and damp as his hair is, it makes him want to stand and it makes him want to push through the weakness in his body. There is something about it. Some _thing._

“My daughter’s name is Tifa Lockhart,” the king announces. Cloud has known this. Her name is on all the scrolls. It is in all the history of each book and story and failure. Her name is carved into weathered, yellow pages in the library of the ancient Shinra tower. Her name is legend.

“She is scattered throughout my kingdom,” he says. “There are five pieces of her. I will list them all to you, so please pay attention and take note of this.” The king clears his throat, and his snarl turns solemn. “One piece of her is her courage,” he says. “It is where the hard-hearted go. It is where the stones lie and the sands fall. Go to this place and you’ll find her there. 

“Another piece is her compassion. It is located in a lush place, full of foliage and vegetation, things that feel soft but are prickly and have thorns that poison you, and leaves that heal you all the same. 

“The next is her strength. It is a lot like courage, but its weight is different. It lies in darkness, scattered in the tombs of this world. Go where no man will go, and seek what every man fears. If you embrace it, you will find it. 

“The fourth piece is her power. It resides in the sky. It floats high above us, just like she does when she was here with me. Learn how to fly,” he says. “And you will gain her power.

“Lastly, the fifth and final piece,” he says, “is her heart. It is locked away and protected in the deep trenches. The key is not bestowed upon everyone. It is difficult to find. And it can only be found when all of her other pieces are cemented together.”

Cloud’s mind whirls around the information. The king explains it all so quickly and so fast. Cloud blinks, and he straightens his back. He tries to file the information away as soon as it falls from the king’s lips. He’s been trained for this. Repeating back words verbatim is a skill he’s learned in the time he had with his training. All of the knights had. 

“So, knight, go and put her back together.” His hands come in front of him, still white and taut, nearly glowing with the fire of magic. “If you do this…” the king continues, but he begins to struggle. Cloud can see it, just like the furrow in his brow. He does not want to say these words. 

“If you do this,” he repeats. “Alliance between humanity and the Reckoning will solidify. We will make a pact. As much as I hate you, and as much as I hate what you’ve done to my world, my life and my daughter, the fates are cruel and they are stubborn, and they want from me my pride, my security, and my power. My daughter has been my guiding light for centuries. As soon as she left me, I have been withering to dust. 

“The time has finally come,” he states, closing his eyes. “She has seen in you what she has not seen in any others. I must accept this fact, and I must accept this fate. She has never been wrong before, but she has never been _right_ before, either. However…I trust her wisdom and her intuition.” 

He turns his eyes to the ball of light. _Wisdom. Intuition._ Cloud gazes upon the orb. Is that her? 

Is that Tifa Lockhart?

“Do not fail her,” the king says. “With all of your pitiful human life, you will succeed here. You have no other choice.”


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments, kudos, and support! There is nothing more inspiring or motivating than other people being excited about a story, and it makes me even _more_ excited to continue writing this. 
> 
> Shoutout of my undying love to [Somebodys_Nightmare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somebodys_Nightmare) for the endless support, the beta-ing (especially as I inundate her with so many ideas and demolish her DMs), and the encouragement. Thanks for being my rock.
> 
> Happy reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Cloud is shuttled away into a guest room, flanked by two empty and clattering suits of armor. They are stilted and uncoordinated, the metal clanking and clamoring down the hallway. Cloud stares at them, avoiding their hollow grips and touches. He jerks away from them the entire way to the room.

As they enter through a solid and ornate oak door, Cloud is assaulted with decadence. The room is covered in plush and velvet, embroidered with the thick, choking layer of magic. There is a bed that is too big against a wall. It is much larger and all-consuming than his cot at the barracks. There are more pillows against the headboard than he can count. There is a vanity and a mirror, a window that is smudged and fogged over, the panels looking out into a dark night. Cloud can’t see anything through the glass, only shimmers and a dull glare.

The king commanded him to sleep through the night, with Cloud to begin his journey at the arrival of dawn.

“The magic will seep into you during your sleep,” the king had told him before he was escorted out of the throne room. “It will help acclimate you to the atmosphere. You may feel sick, nauseous, and sustain a throb in your mind. It should go away within the next few days.” The king had paused. “So I have been told. You’re the first human who has gotten this far over the last two centuries.”

Cloud hadn’t thought he’d be able to fall asleep in such a foreign place. Gazing upon the bedsheets of the room, he starts to believe otherwise. It is unlike any luxury he has ever known.

He is immediately skeptical about it, but he knows he has no reason for it. Besides the inherent hate the magic king holds for him, he would not go against the hope for his daughter, nor her acceptance of Cloud. Cloud is still reeling from the prospect that he passed the test. How could he have done it? What was inside of him?

It is surreal, but it is covered with the emptiness of his missing memories and shrouded with the blanket of grief. He should feel _more_ about it, but he doesn’t. It is merely one step forward in what he’s supposed to do. He was simply chosen by no merit of his own.

He thinks of the orb. Tifa Lockhart. She had pushed inside of his body and had searched his being. What could she have possibly seen to choose him?

He removes the broadsword from his back, leaning it against the wall beside the headboard of the bed. He takes a careful seat at the edge of the mattress, and when it doesn’t swallow him whole, his shoulders start easing from his ears. He should remove his armor, but everything about the room, from the smeared windows hinting at the other world, the ominous mirror adjacent to the bed, and the sudden enveloping wealth cradling him, makes him wary. He’d be more comfortable on the floor or sleeping beside the doorway.

He grabs the hilt of his sword before he lies back against the pillows, laying it across his lap. He stares up at the ceiling, the molding crosshatched in a creamy white weaving pattern. Cloud takes a deep breath and expels it, attempting to calm himself. He closes his eyes for a moment before he blinks them open again, tense and edgy. He waits for the magic to _do_ something to him. How will he acclimatize? Will it crawl up his arms, into his neck? It is already choking him. Is it just a tease, waiting to wrap its fingers tighter and kill him? Will it trickle into his bloodstream, rupture his veins?

End the journey before it even begins?

As comfortable as the pillows are around his head, he can’t settle. Cloud sits up again, placing his metal plated boots on the floor. He runs a hand through his hair, and just as he’s about to stand up and pace, he comes face to face with a sudden light.

Cloud jumps, leaning backward on the bed and nearly swinging his sword across the space in front of him. He stops before he can, realizing the light is an orb. _The_ orb.

He blinks. It shimmers, its glow magnifying before diminishing. It bounces gently from side to side.

“This is the last piece of my daughter that I have left,” the king had told him. “You humans may call it consciousness. Intuition. It is the shell of what is left without her heart. She is wise, and she will be with you on the journey.” He had deeply frowned down at Cloud after he said this. “As I said before, you will _only_ succeed.”

Cloud sits up straighter, his eyes focused on her glow. _Tifa Lockhart._

“Uh, hi,” Cloud says, swallowing to help smooth the raspiness of his voice. “Princess.”

The light shakes side to side. It bounds to the mirror on the other side of the bed, and Cloud watches in astonishment as the light draws lines in it, just like fingers in a foggy window.

 _Tifa,_ it writes, bounding back to him. It gently sways.

Cloud takes a breath. “I don’t know if that’s proper, Princess.”

The light shakes again, flying over to the mirror. It moves so sharply, it looks like she might be pointing. The light circles around the name in the mirror before settling back beside him.

“I…alright,” he says, clearing his throat. “…Tifa.”

The light moves up and down, almost violently. It comes forward and delicately taps his cheek before inching away. It is a warm sensation, leaving a trail of its heat against his skin. Cloud blinks again, raising a hand to his face.

“I…what?”

It circles around, coming forward again and performing the same action against his left cheek. This time, it feels like the soft graze of a downy blanket. Cloud sighs.

“I’m…I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean,” he answers.

The light hovers for a moment, then it bounds over to the mirror slowly. It writes out, in very deliberate motions, _Joy._

Cloud’s eyes narrow on the word. He stares back at the light. “Joy?”

The orb— _Tifa,_ he thinks, trying to fix his thoughts. It’ll take some getting used to.

Tifa moves up and down quickly. She shuttles back to him and travels in a circle around his neck before settling against the hollow of his throat.

His breath catches. It is an indulgent warmth that trickles down his neck and into his chest.

“I, uh, Tifa…” he tries, unsure of what she’s doing. He reaches up, almost afraid to touch the light, before she scuttles out from underneath his hand. She floats in front of his eyes again. She lingers, and Cloud ’s eyes narrow as he stares at her.

“Why…why me?” he whispers, the question wrenched out of him suddenly. Tifa sways in the air, as if rocking in a hammock. She makes her way back to the mirror. Below “joy”, she writes, “mate.”

Cloud’s cheeks color at the word. “But…how do you know?”

He doesn’t want to sound as though he is skeptical of her, nor does he want to sound like he believes she made a mistake. He simply knows the history. He is in a position no other has been granted.

It’s terrifying, if he allows himself to care very much about it.

Her answer is to tap against his chest twice before she makes a circle. She hops to the mirror.

_Heart._

Cloud’s eyes hook on the word. No one has ever said he has _heart._ Passion and ambition, yes, from a few of his superiors. Compassion or empathy...not likely. Can she know that from when she entered his body?

Cloud doesn’t think he can put it past her magical prowess or her intuition. Still, Cloud doesn’t see what she does. Heart? No. She doesn’t know him, but he realizes he no longer knows himself. He doesn’t know much of anything.

Who _is_ he?

She comes back up to him and curls under his jaw. This time, she stays there.

With how warm she is, it feels strangely intimate.

“Um…Princess…” he tries, reverting back to formalities. “I don’t…”

Her light presses further into him, and he’s hushed by the sensation. A wash of calm rushes over him immediately, and he finally feels…at ease. The magic in the room is lessening its chokehold—perhaps it has been ever since she arrived. Still, at the sudden calm, Cloud’s eyes start to become heavy. He glances at the pillows on the bed with a renewed desire.

Cloud finds himself crawling onto the bed in a moment, lying on his back and resting his sword beside him. The warmth of Tifa Lockhart’s light remains right below his jaw.

“Tired,” he whispers. “Will the magic kill me?”

It is a sleepy thought that passes through his lips. He feels her light fade as she jumps to the mirror.

 _No,_ she writes. _Sleep._

She travels back to him and sits on his chest. He glances down at her and is washed with another flood of calm. He blinks lazily, once, twice, and at last, his eyes close and don’t open until morning. 

* * *

Cloud wakes in a different set of armor. That’s the second thing he notices. The first thing he notices is the wondrous, downy pillows bordering his head. He’s never felt such softness. It is almost as if magic has replaced the utterly mundane, _normalcy_ of human pillows. Cloud hardly wants to move before he realizes the day prior hadn’t been a dream.

Tifa’s orb drifts up in front of him, shimmering against the morning light. It spills through the window, now cleared and bright, showing the sky of the outside world. The sky is a creamsicle orange. It is not the blue of the human world. Cloud loses his breath momentarily, too overwhelmed with the shock and renewed realization of the day before. It crowds his mind as he pats the new clothing on his torso, his eyes hooking onto the bright freedom of the window, again, and distracted by Tifa’s orb floating and dipping in the air in front of him.

“I…it wasn’t a dream,” he says.

The orb shakes side to side in a vibrant, energetic manner. She floats to the mirror.

 _No,_ she writes.

Cloud huffs, clenching his leather gloved fists. He is no longer wearing a metal breastplate. The silver is gone. His greaves have vanished. In their place sits a much simpler ensemble, consisting of a dark navy tunic. It is fitted around his chest, the cotton harsh and tightly woven together. It is tucked into matching trousers with a thick, armored belt around his torso and leather suspenders cresting over his shoulders and crossing over his back. Empty slots line the belt, and his trousers fall into a pair of steel-tipped combat boots. A bracer lines his right forearm—his sword arm—and a shoulder pauldron and gauntlet covers his left. He arrived with a shield, but it is gone. Cloud places a hand over the pauldron, wondering if his shield has been transformed into it. The black metal is the same.

It doesn’t feel magical. It feels light and severely lacking.

His broadsword is the only thing unchanged. It lies beside him on the bed, looking exactly the same as it did when he entered the palace. It gives him a strange, sudden bout of comfort.

Cloud grasps its handle, going to stand. His body feels the same. He glances at his gloved hands before he wiggles his toes in his boots. Everything is still connected the same way. He turns his head and glances out the window once more, taking a few careful steps across the floor to reach it. He isn’t sure what he’s expecting when his eyes rove over the new terrain of the magic world, but he gasps in wonder.

There are mountains in the distance. There is sand and lava, forests as long and far across as the horizon. He sees a swirl of black, as though it is an endless crater in the ground. He sees the vast blanket of the sky, tinged in its soft orange glow from the rising dawn.

“This is it,” Cloud says. “This is the place.”

Tifa’s orb comes around in his line of vision, bouncing. She darts to the mirror.

 _Home,_ she writes. Cloud stares at the word, feeling nothing from it.

“A home that broke you,” he says softly in the silence of the room. “I’ve heard a lot about this place. Good things, bad things. I know it’s dangerous, monsters lurking in the corners, myths and legends…” Cloud trails, glancing down at his gloves again. “That makes you dangerous, too, Princess. The chosen hero is not destined to fail, but…if I do…”

Ingrained in Cloud’s mind is his training, his emptiness, and the stories of the Reckoning’s history. While the princess and the king are immortal, it does not mean they are invincible. There was a king before Lockhart, and there was a princess before Tifa. There is no hero’s story before this one, so Cloud has nothing to imagine or believe at the end of this. If he fails…then what? His name will be another one crossed out in the scrolls of history. His name will mean nothing.

Tifa’s orb bounces in front of him again, lightly tapping his cheek. Cloud takes a step back, watching her. She floats back to the mirror. _Succeed,_ she twirls into the glass.

“I’m supposed to,” he says under his breath. He glances out of the window one more time. “What if I don’t?”

Tifa shuttles back to him, tapping him vigorously on his chest. Cloud shakes his head, sighing at her.

The only reason he recollects for why he’s performing this trial is because of his grief. That endless emptiness inside of him. _That’s_ his purpose. His purpose is to fight for something he will never gain back. For some semblance of future. It is vague, but it is important. He _must._

He had given up his memories willingly, and though Cloud doesn’t truly know himself, nor does he have the full picture of _why,_ he stares at his gloved hands and thinks, perhaps, that was the point.

If he fails, it won’t rightly matter.

He has forgotten, and that must be enough.

There is a knock on the heavy wooden door of the room a few minutes later. It opens to reveal the empty suits of armor, the same ones that had escorted him the previous evening. They stand at either side fo the doorway, waiting. Tifa’s orb bounds in between them, bobbing to and fro before she scuttles down the hallway.

Believing it to be his cue to follow, Cloud slides his broadsword into the sheath on his back. He takes a deep breath and walks through the threshold of the room.

Tifa waits for him, shimmering, then bounding down the rest of the hallway and turning at the end of the passage. The suits of armor rattle and vibrate beside him as their footsteps clap against the gray tile floor, and Cloud does his best to avoid their touch. The hallway seems to be decorated just enough to impress him. There are portraits of landscapes framed in golden stained wood. The walls are as bright as the evening stars. Everything seems to faintly glow. It is a beautiful place. Beautiful and deceptive.

They herd Cloud to the throne room, through the expansive entryway. The opening arches, and wide, stone columns herald the entrance. There are a myriad of short steps leading up to the room, and Cloud takes them two at a time to keep pace with the suits of armor. As he passes into the room, the weight of magic bashes into his shoulders like a sack of rocks. Cloud immediately falls into a kneeling position, the wind knocked out of him.

“Sir Strife,” King Lockhart greets him. He is once again seated in his throne. He wears a long, velvet shawl around his shoulders, and it nearly grazes the floor. It is rimmed with white fur and is dyed a deep burgundy. Glittering, black armor encases his torso, falling to belted, white trousers and buckled, black woodsman boots. A gleaming, golden hilt of a sword shines at his hip. “I see you are experiencing the full weight of magic. Though you are human, you will now be able to appreciate the true form of power in my world. You will now know the true burden of what my daughter has endured over the last century.”

A line of sweat beads on Cloud’s forehead. The magnitude of it is sweltering and rigid. His back physically bows under the force.

“You said I would acclimate overnight,” Cloud breathes, staring at the floor.

“Yes. Well, this is a new experience for all of us, Sir Strife,” King Lockhart admits without remorse. “As I mentioned before, Tifa will accompany you. This is in part to help guide you through the treacherous terrain of our world, but it is to also ensure your loyalty to this journey. Without reminders of your goal, I’ve heard humans lose faith. Tifa’s light will not allow this to transpire.”

Cloud swallows, daring to glance up against the weight of magic. It is worse—so much worse than the previous day. It’s worse than the sensation of losing his memories. Acclimatize. Sure.

The king lied. He knows it.

Tifa’s orb hovers beside her father’s figure on his throne. It shimmers when Cloud’s eyes land on her.

A line of sweat curls from his temple to his chin. The burden of magic begins to make Cloud’s fear in the face of the king dissipate.

“You said I have no choice but to succeed. What makes me believe you think I’ll only fail?” Cloud rasps.

Tifa’s orb shakes in a bout of vibration. King Lockhart’s lips twist up in a smile.

“I don’t think you’ll fail. I trust in my daughter and her choices. I have never trusted in a human.”

“You lied to me,” Cloud states. A build up of saliva floods his mouth. He spits it out, and it mars the glow of the marble floor. “You knew I wouldn’t acclimate. You knew I would—“

“No,” King Lockhart interrupts, his voice bellowing against the walls. “I didn’t know how your mortal body could adapt. It seems the fabric of your being is more fragile than I first believed. A shame. I had such low standards before.”

A ball of anger begins to tighten in the pit of Cloud’s stomach. It feels like a rock, like the rocks on his shoulders from the magic world, only it’s Cloud’s emotions that start beckoning to life. Cloud inhales a sharp breath, and he pushes his palm against his knee. He tries to stand but is unable to perform the action. His anger builds from his lack of strength.

All of that training. All of that time.

“I am not your puppet yet, King,” Cloud snarls. “Don’t you want me to save your daughter?”

King Lockhart stares at him, his lips still curled in a condescending smirk. “Ah, not as subservient as you were the previous afternoon, are you? You spend one night in my castle, and you believe you can talk back to me?” His eyes glint dangerously. Cloud knows he’s treading thin ice. The king can more than likely dismember him and put him back together. Make him feel a corruptible amount of pain as a lesson. He’s malicious. Cloud knows better, but it is his anger. His anger mixes with his grief, and it makes him bold.

“Of course I want my daughter to be saved, but if you cannot even walk out of my throne room and into my world to begin the journey, what else can I do but mock you?”

Tifa’s orb vibrates harder. At the end of her father’s words, she twirls over to Cloud in a manic rush. She circles around him before landing at the hollow of his throat.

It is like the previous evening. She is warm, and it feels intimate and, somehow, taboo. A rush of calm cascades over him, and his anger is immediately blunted from it. Miraculously, a level of the burden eases as well, and Cloud takes his next few breaths easier and without immense struggle.

He reaches up to touch the orb, but she flits away from him, coming around to hover above his eyes. She sways under his stare before she shimmers. She comes forward to gently tap at his chest.

It has been less than a day, and that is an action he has already become accustomed. The tapping on his chest.

“Tifa,” her father commands. “He must learn on his own.”

The orb vibrates again, making two quick dashes back and forth in the air. If a ball of light could be angry or cross, perhaps it is what she is trying to convey. King Lockhart’s lips fall into a frown, and he turns his glare to Cloud.

“Now that my daughter has halved your burden, Sir Strife,” he nearly hisses. “I take it that you’ll be able to walk out of here on your own two feet. The sun is now above the horizon. The time has come.” He straightens, standing from his throne. “I take you remember my words from yesterday?”

Cloud swallows before he dares to push up from his kneeling position. It is still a challenge, but he manages much better than before. He wobbles once before he settles into his legs. He pulls his shoulders back and down, standing at attention.

“Yes,” he answers.

“Good. I will not repeat them,” King Lockhart drawls. “Now, go. Leave this place. Through the castle doors, you will find a world that is vibrant, wild, and fully unlike your own. You have trained, but you will be unprepared. You have learned, but you will falter to your ignorance.” He takes one breath, staring down at Cloud with his full height.“I do not like you, but I entrust in you the spirit of my daughter. Find her, save her, and release her. Bring her back to me, and I will sign the pact with your species. Fail…” the king trails, his eyes blackening viciously. “Fail, and I will wring your soul from your body and bury your bones where no one will find them.”

Cloud expected nothing less. In fact, he expected worse. He nods.

The large gold and silver doors creak open behind him, the empty suits of armor pulling at the curved handles. The magic world is open, beginning with green fields and rolling hills. It is a brilliant display inside the window of the castle doors. Cloud swallows and clenches his fists at his sides.

Tifa’s orb comes to hover beside him. He looks at her, and she moves up and down.

“Thanks,” he mutters. She swirls before tapping his cheek. Cloud nearly takes a step back but he stills himself, looking at her for a moment longer before facing the doorway again. He begins his trek forward, out from underneath the archway of the throne room, past the thick, braided columns, and down the thin steps. As he comes upon the threshold of the castle doors, King Lockhart halts him one last time.

“The rot in your world is also in ours,” he states. “It connects us like our hate. It feeds off of light, and it will be voracious for the piece of my daughter that hovers beside you. I…”

At this, King Lockhart hesitates. Cloud glances over his shoulder at him. The king’s face is lined with severity and rage, but it does not hide the fact that he also looks devastatingly sad.

“I need you to protect her light.” His jaw buckles. “Please.”

 _Please._ Cloud is astounded at the plea. He blinks at the king, and he glances at Tifa’s orb. It shimmers.

“That is without question, King,” Cloud says. “It’s a pity you thought you had to beg.”

King Lockhart bristles. His cheeks darken, and Cloud can see the shadow of his artery throbbing in his neck even from twenty yards away.

“Leave my sight,” he snaps, a glow beginning to surround him. Cloud’s skin prickles from the static that builds in the air.

Turning away, Cloud steps out into a new world, the princess’s light floating closely at his side.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HI EVERYONE. Thank you so much AGAIN for your support, comments, kudos, etc. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to adequately explain how much I love you all.
> 
> Hey Somebodys_Nightmare, it's been a minute since you beta'd this for me, but thank you as always for it. Thanks for always watering and helping foster my _ridiculous, completely wack, definitely insane I am going to an insane asylum if I'm not there already_ ideas that live in my brain. I honestly don't think I've ever been more confident in writing than I am now. 
> 
> Happy reading! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!<3

The magic world is a vast place. 

As Cloud steps out of the castle, he feels out of his depth. There is a long drawbridge lain before him, connecting the sprawling entrance of the castle to the green, expansive blanket of the lands. The bridge crosses over a silver water moat, and Cloud glances over it as he crosses the wooden planks. It shines up at him like a reflective slab of glass, a gentle fog hovering above it like smoke. A few air bubbles surface, confusing the thought of a chilly body of water being hot, potentially simmering with heat. Cloud pauses to stare at the bubbles, eying how they form along the edge of the moat against the land like water in a skillet. He can’t see any creatures underneath the surface, though the view is obscured by the fog and the silvery sheen of the water. 

Cloud glances back forward and walks on. There are dirt roads and trails that sprawl across the grasslands, curving over the sloping hills. His line of sight is obstructed by the changing terrain over the fields, and he looks up toward the sun, orienting himself. Off to the east, the sun clips against the jagged edges of a mountain range, vividly colored in the house of purple, blue, and rimmed in gold. Toward the north is a flatter expanse of land. It is encompassed in a bronze haze, but the view is obstructed by a line of forestry. The forest becomes thicker and thicker the further he turns his head toward the west, the thickets becoming tall and giant. Fat, gray clouds hover over the trees, darkened by the sight of falling rain. Streaks of lightning flash in consecutive rounds, a few seconds apart from one another. 

Cloud looks up at the sky, admiring the light, creamsicle shading of it, the normal blue of his human world hinting at the edges. Patches of blue are visible, streaked inside of the orange like a painting. It’s a beautiful sky, humming with an iridescent magic. 

His eyes catch on another landmass, his breath halting at the sight. It floats like a cloud, slowly traveling across the dawn of the morning. It is very large, perhaps a mile or two in length, and he can spy the changing layers of sediment underneath. He cannot make out all of the structures on top of it, but there are hills he can see. Trees and cliffs litter the edges, but he can’t see any stone houses or manmade creations—there should not be any, Cloud knows, but he can’t wrap his head around how the creatures of this world live or make their homes. The king and princess have the castle. Glancing around his immediate surroundings, he does not see any small settlements or villages, nor does he see any sign posts denoting directions to various areas or regions.

He takes a deep breath, and the texture of the air is peculiar. It is sharp and almost sweet, saturated with different ingredients he is unaccustomed to experiencing. He briefly wonders if this is part of the magic of the world, too. The rush of the gentle breeze curling around him is bright and soothing, and the temperature is mild. He is nearly comfortable as he listens the the sounds of the morning, dew glinting on the blades of grass beside his booted feet and bordering the trails. This short stanza of time does not feel much different than his own world, and if he closes his eyes, he’d imagine he’s back in the mortal world.

Tifa’s orb flutters in front of him. She sways back and forth across his face, shimmering.

“What is it?” he asks. 

She bounds up higher in the air, and Cloud’s eyes follow her. She makes two motions toward the north, pointing at the russet, golden sands in the distance, before she lowers and hovers before him again.

Cloud tips his head. “That’s where we go first?”

She bounces up and down in affirmation before taking her place beside his shoulder. She remains close, and he feels the light wave of heat from her warmth like a candle flame.

“Alright,” he says. Once he reaches the end of the bridge, he pauses and takes a deep breath. As he steps over the threshold, he is jarred by the man who appears before him. The air whips in one large gust before it calms, and Cloud’s hand immediately moves to the hilt of his sword. He widens his stance and is about to bring his sword forward before he’s greeted by bellowing laughter.

The man in front of him is the size of two human men. His arms are thick and corded like ancient oak trees, his protruding veins like vines wrapping down from his shoulders to his left hand. His right forearm is missing, replaced with a metal scythe. It is so sharp, the morning sun reflects against the steel in an ominous glow. 

He wears a leather vest, exposing the stretched, muscled skin of his torso. His trousers are made of roughly hewn cotton, folding into thick, rubber soled boots. He has several metal buckles holding his clothes together, his vest also bordered with teeth for a zipper—though Cloud is of the mind that the man would be unable to close vest with how wide and exaggeratedly strong his chest is. 

There are scars across the right side of his face. They consist of three dark, jagged lines, as though made by a claw. The stubble of his beard does not grow along the marks, highlighting their discoloration. The skin of his mouth is stretched into a wide grin, and, still laughing, his warm, brown eyes linger across Cloud and Tifa’s orb.

Cloud grimaces, bringing his sword forward. He eyes the scythe of his arm while the man’s humor finally begins to subside. He thinks about going on the offensive, debating where to strike first. Tightening his fists along the handle of his sword, he is stopped by Tifa’s orb tapping against his cheek. He glances at her, and she moves back and forth in quick, sharp movements. Cloud blinks at her, his hold becoming less tense.

The first words of the man come not a moment later, and they surprise him.

“Well, ain’t this some shit,” the man announces. His voice is gruff and deep. They cascade over Cloud like an earthquake. He turns his head to stare up at the man, and he raises an eyebrow. 

“Can’t believe it’s finally happened while I’m still alive and kickin’,” the man states, eyeing Cloud. “Our princess found someone worthy…and he’s a short, scrawny son of a bitch.”

Cloud bristles at that, his fists clenching on his sword again. He pushes his feet deeper into the ground.

“I can show you  _ scrawny _ , asshole,” Cloud growls. 

The man laughs again. “At least there’s fight in ya. Good. Was about to question Princess Tifa’s judgment, I haven’t seen her in so long.”

Tifa’s orb instantly bounces in the space between the giant man and Cloud. She shoots forward and taps against the man’s chest three times before she circles around him and lands in the hollow of his throat. The man’s intact hand reaches up and folds over her light, and his grin softens to a simple smile. He closes his eyes for a moment and tips his head. 

Underneath his hand, Tifa’s orb glows. Her light expands, slowly seeping over the man like a spilled drink. It absorbs into his skin and his clothes, stretching until it covers him from head to toe. It changes his milk chocolate skin into a gentle, cerulean shade. 

“Ah, Tifa,” the man mutters in a rumble. “I’ve missed you, too.” 

Cloud watches the moment pass. His shoulders slowly drop from his ears, and he sighs, holstering his sword. Though he’s full of irritation, this man is not a threat. Cloud crosses his arms and waits, watching with curiosity as Tifa’s glow slowly starts to dissipate. Once gone, the man lifts his hand, and Tifa’s orb moves slightly away from him. She continues to float in the space before the man’s gaze, his smile continuing to linger.

“I’ll admit, Teef, I didn’t think you’d find anyone worthy, in this lifetime or the next.”

His familiarity with Tifa shocks Cloud. He talks to her as if he’s known her all her life.

Tifa shimmers, her orb shaking like the clapper of a bell. The man laughs.

“Don’ get me wrong, I trust ya. I’ve always trusted ya.” The man’s gaze falls onto Cloud. “It’s him I don’ nec’ssarily trust.”

Tifa shakes again, dropping down and landing in front of Cloud’s face before she falls lower to his chest. She comes forward and presses into his sternum, lingering there for a moment before bounding up in front of the man again. 

Cloud loses his breath before he feels a blush begin to creep up on his face. Grimacing, he wills it away, uncertain as to why his heart begins to suddenly rage under his skin. 

The man scrutinizes Cloud for a while longer before he sighs. “Ah. I see.” He turns his eyes on Tifa’s orb again. “We’ll just have to watch, won’ we?”

Tifa’s orb bounces up and down, almost happily, before she sinks back down to Cloud. She settles in the space beside his shoulder once more. 

“Well, knight,” the man bellows, focusing all his attention on Cloud’s form. Cloud’s hands itch to reach for his sword again, but he abstains. “You’ve been chosen by our princess. That ain’t happen to no one else in our history, so congratulations, Spikes.”

Cloud bristles, too easily fueled by the nickname and the tone of the man’s voice. Tifa’s orb instantly touches his shoulder, and he feels that strange wash of calm. He can’t decide, in the moment, if he appreciates it or despises it. 

“My name is Barret Wallace,” the man carries on, either oblivious of Cloud’s annoyance or uncaring. “I’ve been Tifa’s guardian since birth. My duty has always been to support her decisions, advise, and listen. Once, I had the authority to deter her when youth seemed to complicate her judgment. Now, it’s a moot point. She embodies wisdom and deeply rooted intuition. She sees what we cannot.” He clears his throat, and he shifts his stance. When he widens his stance, his booted feet rock into the earth, and Cloud feels their vibrations in his legs. 

“My purpose has changed. I advise  _ you,  _ now, knight. You know nothing of our land, and its mysteries will unfold the deeper you travel and the more you piece back together the heart of our world.”

The man, Barret, becomes serious. The light gleam in his eyes diminish as he continues. He places his arms behind his back, his chest forward and proud. 

“You will fight monsters and overcome trials. You’ll prove your worth and become strong. You may lose your way, and perhaps you will find it. That’s to be determined by you,” he says. 

It begins to sound like one of Cloud’s old officer speeches. Defaulting to his training, Cloud stands straighter. 

“I will warn you, Spikes,” he says, but Cloud interrupts him.

“Cloud,” he snaps. “My name is Cloud.”

Barret looks on, unimpressed. “What, you want me to call you by Cloud? Because I ain’t. Spikes fits you better.”

Cloud barely restrains a sigh, saying, “Are you going to warn me about how  _ dangerous  _ and  _ different  _ this world is? Because I’ve heard it a thousand times before.”

Tifa’s orb taps at him again, but this time she hits his temple. It isn’t as gentle as the other touches, and Cloud nearly winces in surprise. He glances at her, and she shakes back and forth. Blinking, Cloud gets the impression that she’s reprimanding him. The side of his head begins to sting, and Cloud reaches up to rub at the spot. 

“Ow…” he mutters.

Barret laughs loudly. “A smart mouth, huh? Tifa will certainly wisen you up.”

Cloud’s eyes narrow at both of them. Tifa’s orb shimmers and shakes. Cloud tries to piece together the action. Is she annoyed? Or is she smiling and laughing? 

Cloud allows himself a sigh this time. 

“If you wanna  _ listen, _ ” Barret starts. “I have two more things to tell ya. One, not every creature wants Tifa to come together again. Some have embraced the disruption of rule, their magic becoming unchecked. Others have become rulers in their own right, either protecting the pieces of our Princess Tifa or feeding off of her power.” Barret’s lips curl down into a grimace, the skin of his eyes pinching at the corners. “It makes me sick.”

Tifa’s orb bounces up to Barret again, and she tenderly rests against his cheek. Barret’s grimace turns into a frown. “It ain’t right, Tifa.”

She taps his cheek twice before settling away, dropping back toward Cloud. Cloud watches as Barret struggles to keep his anger in check, his one hand tightening in a fist.

“Most of the creatures are good. A lot aren’t. Greed ain’t just the driver of the mortal world. It drives our world, too. They don’ call us  _ Reckoning  _ for nothin’, you know.”

“Why do you?” Cloud asks, instantly intrigued.

Shrugging, Barret simply says, “When the right magic comes together, it can destroy worlds. Ours was once almost destroyed, hundreds of years ago, when the first princess fell in love with a human.” Barret eyes Tifa’s orb. “Ever since, it’s been impossible for magic to  _ fix,  _ like it once could. Now, we need humans to survive. Goddamn fools in love.”

Cloud thinks back to the history he’s learned. It coincides with what Barret says. When the first Princess of the Reckoning fell in love with a human, it changed the course of both worlds. Once, relations between human and Reckoning had been forbidden. Now, it’s mandatory and necessary. 

It didn’t seem to change the relationship between the rulers of either of the worlds. Over time, the animosity between species had grown. The Reckonings had kept their power out of conflicts in the human world. In turn, the human world attempted to steal the magic when they could. Before the Rot, stealing from the magic world was an esteemed occupation. Pieces of magic or even creatures could be bought at the right price, by the monarchy or by the humans who could afford to buy a license for the action. Each foreign, magical item or being was monitored by the monarchy, and each human rich enough to own magic—either dukes or earls—could do with it whatever they wanted. It had always been a small war between the worlds, filled with minor grievances and headaches, as though they were siblings fighting one another for the last word. 

But then, the Rot came. It swirled around the human world and then collected into the magical world, pooling between them like bad blood, worsening and thickening. After the Rot, of course, the king broke apart his daughter. 

Cloud glances at Tifa’s orb. She shines at him, her light pulsing once before fading back into her normal glow.

“This world isn’t what it once was,” Barret continues, glancing out over the fields. “There used to be more. There was more land, more people and creatures, more  _ life. _ The Rot started to kill it. Started to kill us. Tifa’s broken magic helped nothin’. To be honest, I think it made everything worse.” Sighing, Barret shakes his head before glaring back down at Cloud. 

“Beware of the Rot, Spikes. It comes out of the ground. It lives in the trees. It can hit ya without warnin’, so take heed. Fiends take residence here, too. While our worlds are different, we mirror each other in a lotta ways. Don’t forget that when you put your big ass sword to good use, ya hear me?”

Barret’s body begins to fade. Cloud blinks, taking a sharp breath.

“Wait,” he says. “I still have questions.”

“I still have answers,” Barret says, laughing. It echoes across the plains. “You’ll find me again when you’re ready to hear them.”

Barret disappears into the air, one more harsh gust bashing into Cloud as he leaves. Cloud grunts and curses, finding his footing before toppling over. “Goddamn it.”

Once the gust calms, Tifa’s orb taps at his cheek. She points towards the northern sands and bounces. 

Cloud’s eyes rove over the terrain, Barret’s words making their home in his mind. 

_ It comes out of the ground. It lives in the trees.  _

Cloud steels himself, every inch of him becoming taut and prickling with the sweet, sharp magic on the air. 

He heads north.

* * *

There are dirt roads and broken cobblestone paths. It is a surprise, the trails seemingly out of place and mundane for such a world. Cloud follows them through the empty plains, following the gentle curves of land, and redirecting himself north when the path begins to stray too far east or west.

Tifa remains his guide, tapping his cheek occasionally and pointing if she wants to draw his attention. Sometimes she’ll spin or shimmer, and Cloud finds himself imagining what the action would be if she was human. Perhaps the shimmering is a smile, but he can’t see her spinning being a true spin, a girl twirling on her feet in excitement.

Soon, the trek takes them into a sparsely crowded forest. The trees are thin and skinny,broken up by palmfuls of space between them. The vegetation is more lush than the grasslands, the pockets of soil a dark, moist brown, almost black in its richness. Cloud eyes the forest floor but continues moving. He waits for something suspicious, be it a rustle of the leaves or a crack of a fallen twig on the ground. The journey has been kind so far. He waits for the indelible strike of something unknown. The Rot comes to mind first, if only because he’s already been warned twice for it. Other monsters or fiends comb through his mind second, just as he had been on the plains at home. He waits for something to breathe too heavy on a bush or a thicket, an ambush prepared to strike, too ready for its next victim.

It doesn’t happen for another hour. Cloud has fallen into a steady cadence of walking, finding a rhythm across the terrain. His shoulders remain tense, and his eyes dart around—but the observation is more from wonderment and intrigue than it is suspicion and wariness. They have arrived in a valley, walking on a downhill slope, with the occasional breeze flooding into the tunnel. It kicks up a swirl of dust, ruffling Cloud’s hair with dirt. Vegetation is becoming lesser and lesser, patches of grass turning into hardy weeds and fewer plants freckling the walls of the valley. The height of the land surrounding them becomes steeper and higher the further they travel in, and Cloud begins to experience an eerie sensation along the back of his neck. The easiest entrapment would be from above. They are most vulnerable with an aerial attack. They could be flanked, too, crammed on both sides like a sandwich without any space for much movement or countering.

Cloud doesn’t like the sensation he’s getting. His hand keeps twitching to the hilt of his sword. Every crackle of noise, be it from the wind or a rock sliding off the cliff faces, makes his head dart toward the sound. Something is waiting for them. He is only uncertain of what.

He hears two consecutive rocks tumbling down the cliffs. Cloud stops, glancing up toward the right side of the cliff face wall. The two rocks land approximately ten feet in front of where he stands. The wall of the cliff is at least four stories high, and Cloud cranes his neck back to see any shadows or hint of a threat. When the shadows appear, they’re quick. They are there and gone in a blink.

Cloud narrows his eyes, opening his stance. He grips the hilt of his sword and stares at the line of the cliff, waiting for them to dash across again.

Tifa’s orb vibrates in his periphery. She curls close and finds the skin behind his ear. Her warmth hooks around the shell of his ear like a cuff. Cloud is momentarily distracted by her action, trying to retain his focus. “Princess…Tifa,” he corrects himself absently. “What are you doing?”

Her answer is a flood of heat. His muscles loosen with a rush of blood, and his eyesight sharpens from a sudden, wicked bout of adrenaline.

“Ah,” Cloud mutters, his eyes finding the cliff again. One of the shadows dart past, but he’s able to follow it with his newly heightened senses. He pulls his sword off his back, settling it in front of him. “I get it. Thank you.”

He receives a pulse of energy in answer.

There are two creatures. They finally jump off the cliff landing, lunging from wall to wall before one reaches the floor of the valley. The other slices through the air and aims for Cloud’s head. It is an easy block, and the creature bounces off his sword before Cloud can counter. It lands on all fours, straying back and finding its partner. They look like large cats, almost like the leopards back in Cloud’s homeland. Their ears are long with sharp points, their faces are triangular with high cheekbones, and they have two grotesquely long whiskers, one on each cheek. They slither and snap in the air like the tail of a snake.

Their eyes are amber, and their fur is a rusted orange. It matches the dust of the valley.The tails slice into the air, curling and unwinding in an ominous swirl. The smooth way they prowl even remind Cloud of a snake, so sinuous and graceful. He glares at them. The creatures glare back. One of them sniffs the air, and it produces a purring sound. The other’s ear twitches, and it titters back, baring a healthy amount of fang.

Cloud watches as they take their places. One stays behind, its muscles rippling. The other waits one more second before it dashes forward, letting a claw fly out towards Cloud’s face. Cloud anticipates his dodge, ducking out of the way and slicing his sword upward. He misses the belly, but he cuts off half the tail. The creature yowls, its blood splattering across the dusty ground. It turns on its haunches with a wild snarl.

Cloud glances at the other creature, and he sees some kind of static building between its whiskers. A ball of electric light is beginning to form.

Behind him, the other creature is angry enough to jump at Cloud with two consecutive jumps. Cloud dodges underneath the first and counterattacks the second, this time slicing across its face. A thick slash of blood mars its cheek, and its eyes begin to shine. They glow gold, the normal amber lit up from the inside. Cloud glances back at the other creature, who’s electricity has become the same size of its face. Cloud is uncertain what the assault will be, but even he knows the look of a mortally wounding attack.

Cloud sighs. “Shit.”

A pulsing warmth caresses his limbs. When he glances back at the other creature, it has started to run at him, and when he looks at its face, their eyes catch. A piercing pain cuts into his head. Cloud winces, his vision doubling and blurring. When the creature jumps at him, he rolls out of the way, but the fiend cuts his chest. Cloud grunts and tumbles before the creature jumps again. Cloud swings wildly this time, and his sword blessedly strikes across the belly. It snarls in pain, taking minimal time to recover and jumps again and again. Cloud does his best to evade and give his vision time to settle, and he experiences pulses of energy from Tifa cascade through him. It begins to polish his eyesight, and it starts dulling the pain from the slash on his chest.

As he evades the creature, its blood dribbles on him from its attack attempts, its claws snagging Cloud’s trousers twice and nicking the skin of his thigh. When more blood lands on Cloud, his skin starts to feel caked and stiff. He squints, blinking, his vision almost fully cleared. He glances over at the other creature, but he can only see the great, fuzziness of electricity overcoming it.

Cloud glares at the bleeding creature in front of him. It prowls for a moment before it lunges again. Markedly slower, it is much simpler for Cloud to slip away from its blow. It lands against the wall of the cliff, and Cloud hurriedly stabs its body and severs the spine, the strike killing it almost instantaneously.

Cloud pulls out his sword and whirls around toward the other fiend. In the next moment, it shoots the ball of energy at Cloud. It happens so fast, all Cloud can do is flatten himself on the ground to avoid getting blasted. He feels its heat and power singe the fine hair on his arms, and he hears it crack against the face of the cliff. A handful of rocks break and crash on the ground, the vibration pushing through his chest.

Rolling himself into a kneeling position, Cloud’s vision sharpens. He feels another rush of warmth in his body, and it helps propel him forward toward the creature. It fires off another blast, and Cloud jumps into the air. The creature cocks his head and fires off one ball after another. Cloud twists and flips to avoid them. One nicks the elbow of his non-dominant arm, and he loses the sensation in his forearm and his hand. It immediately goes limp. Cloud counts his blessings as he retains his hold on his sword, using the momentum from gravity to cut across the body of the fiend as he comes down upon it.

His sword pierces its neck. The electricity fizzles, and the bright light in its eyes dwindles and flickers until it fades. Cloud slowly stands from his landed kneeling position, catching his breath as he slides the sword out of its body. He grimaces at his sword, wishing he had a cloth to clean it off. Instead, he regretfully slips it onto the harness on his back. He eyes the dead creature on the ground and swipes the sleeve of his tunic across his brow. Now that the battle is ended, he can admire the lines of the beast. It is a strong looking fiend, the muscles bunched around the shoulder blades, and its claws two inches long, curving just enough for climbing along the cliffs and cutting into throats.

The whiskers continue to buzz with electricity, residual sparks jumping across them. Cloud’s left arm is still deadened weight, and he swings it around to attempt to regain feeling. It is numb, paralyzed, and Cloud massages it with his other hand. Only then does he notice the hard and thickened patches of skin on his right arm. They dot him like freckles, but they are terribly stiff and almost rocky to touch. His chest is gently bleeding, and the cuts on his thighs are merely shallow scratches. After a minute of surveying his injuries, Cloud sighs. Five wounds in total. Had he still been at Academy, he would have gotten failing marks and more than a few sneers.

Looking at his left arm, he mutters, “Will I get it back?”

Tifa’s warmth pulses through him again, and his left arm lightly prickles. It begins to feel like it’s starting to come back to life. It is weak, however, and Cloud frowns in frustration. The stiffness starts to loosen in his right, and it’s a relief. Cloud hadn’t realized how much it felt like a rock under his skin until the sensation eased.

“Guess we’ll see more of these, won’t we?” he asks, his glance lingering on the dead fiend before he turns his body forward in the valley. The dust has kicked up more, and the rest of the trail is obscured from their sight.

Tifa disengages from his ear, floating around in front of his eyes. She bounces up and down.

“Figured as much,” he states, his eyes flickering up to the edge of the cliff. Everything is quiet, and he no longer feels the cloak of paranoia. “This fight…” he starts, though he cannot say any further words about it. It is almost shameful to talk about his blunders. Speaking them aloud to royalty is even…even worse. Cloud clears his throat. “I…Thank you. For before. And now,” he says, shaking his right arm. “It helped me.”

Having and receiving help is erroneous. He would be given a harsh scolding had he been in the human world. Cloud isn’t sure how he should feel receiving it here, in a foreign terrain that is not his own, from a princess who he is meant to protect.

Tifa answers by coming forward and tapping his cheek. Cloud tucks his chin toward his chest, still unused to the action. What would it equate to, if she was in her true form? Cloud highly doubts it would be a kiss on the cheek, but that is what it feels like. It always makes him feel…unsteady. Uncertain and unsteady.

“Uh…they weren’t inflicted with Rot, were they?” he asks, glancing back down at the corpses. “Their blood was normal. They didn’t look corrupted with anything out of the ordinary.”

Tifa sways, swiping left to right. She hovers above the dead creature closest to them, waiting for a moment before circling around the area. She bounds back to Cloud and sways again.

Cloud tilts his head, contemplating her movements. “Protecting their territory?”

Tifa bounces up and down, moving to rest on his left shoulder. The tingling and prickling becomes more pronounced down his forearm and into his fingers. He wiggles them before he clenches them in a fist.

“I’ll try to avoid that in the future,” he says under his breath, gesturing to his arm. Tifa shimmers brightly once before dimming, and Cloud begins walking into the blanket of kicked up dust further along the valley.

Behind him, the bodies of the creatures disintegrate into shards of light, melding into the ground, and winking out of existence.


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, to you lovely readers. I hope you continue to enjoy this story and the adventure. <3 I'm slowly but surely trying to excavate it from my brain.
> 
> Thanks to my partner-in-crime, Somebodys_Nightmare, for beta'ing this a while back and always being so supportive. <3 
> 
> Happy reading! I hope you enjoy!

It takes another hour and a half before they arrive on the other side of the valley. The air has become thicker with swirling dirt and sand, and the heat is intensifying. It is more and more oppressive with each step. Cloud takes a deep breath and swipes at his forehead again, wanting desperately to take off his thickly threaded cotton tunic. His training tells him better. _Never when a lady is present._ Glancing over at Tifa’s orb, the mantra seems irrelevant and almost unnecessary. When Cloud thinks about disrobing with her orb right beside him, it causes him to flush even more. Would she even remember it? What does she see, anyway? She might only view him as a ball of light, too, then this whole contemplation would be moot.

He rolls his eyes and presses on, sweltering and uncomfortable.

As they come upon land outside of the valley, the air is achingly dry, and most of the colors are varying shades of red and brown. The sandy earth cuts across his ankles with the infrequent breezes in the canyon, and his lips start to feel chapped and rough. There is a rocky archway that greets them, the pillars creating them pointed and sharp like spikes aimed for the heavens.

Tifa bounces and points, bounding forward. She has not strayed away from him like this during the entire day, and Cloud has a sudden bout of panic. He hurries to catch up with her.

She leads him through several rocky formations until they arrive to a clearing. It opens up to a broken and battered temple, several pieces and stones missing along their towering columns. The pillar in the middle is the tallest, the one to the left one story shorter, and the tower to the right so low, it is nearly touching the ground. There are flames lighting the inside of the temple, though from Cloud’s vantage, it seems to be made up of flames, rock, sediment, and nothing else.

How it is all fashioned together seems peculiar. It reminds Cloud of the throne room in the magic castle, the highest tower resembling a high seat among the ruins. The flames behind them make it glow a beautiful, strangely powerful red, so red it is a deep scarlet. The longer Cloud stares at it, the more and more he can see how it seeps into the stones around them, absorbed into the sands on the ground like a spilled flask of water. Cloud suddenly realizes how parched he is, desperate for a cup of water to hit his tongue. He is mesmerized by the journey the redness makes, inching around the cracked stones of the tower and crawling closer and closer towards his booted feet. Fascinated and wholly absorbed by the movement, Cloud can only stand and watch. He loses his breath. He can’t fight it. He doesn’t want to fight it. He wants it to consume him. His heart trills behind his sternum at the raging desire for it.

Tifa’s orb bounces in front of his eye line, and he is suddenly jolted out of the daze. He blinks, shaking his head and frowning.

“What _is_ that?” he mumbles under his breath, a sudden anger at himself beginning to build. “Why did it take over me?”

Tifa slips closer and taps his cheek, shimmering. She sways in front of him before pointing at the top of the highest tower. Cloud’s eyes follow her gesture, and he sighs. When his gaze hooks onto the redness, he immediately averts his stare.

It takes no longer than another moment for a voice to break through the gentle breezes of the canyon dessert.

“Is that a human mortal I smell in my home?”

Cloud takes a sharp breath, his eyes darting up toward the sound. He focuses on a beast now at the top of the tower, lounging without a care in the world. The color of his fur is a deep, orange sunset, highlighted with an undertone of burnished red underneath the bright sunlight of mid-afternoon. Tufts of hair along the top of his head curl down his neck and along his spine, as dark as the crimson that seeped into the ground moments before. His head is held high, his front legs crossed over each other as though he is part human, his lines regal and sleek. A swipe of his tail shows a flame of fire at the end of it, like a wick of a candle, glowing against the dark, hidden room of the temple behind it. He is missing one eye, his socket scarred shut and darkened with one healed cut across it. The one eye he does have is the color of filtered honey. It is a more pronounced shade than the amber of the other fiends Cloud slayed, but there is a hint of resemblance between this beast and the other two.

However, this creature is larger. His paws are thick and fat with gleaming claws teasing the stone of his makeshift throne. His gaze prods at Cloud with interest, one of his fangs poking at his bottom lip.

He is not a cat, but he is not a wolf. He is something in between, and Cloud straightens, his hand automatically coming up to grasp the hilt of his sword. He slides it out of its harness, bringing it forward with a loud _zing_ of metal.

“Ah, the chosen knight,” the creature drawls. “Our queen has made her decision.”

Tifa’s orb flutters around Cloud before flying up toward the beast. Cloud steps hurriedly forward, her name on his tongue to call her back. His voice is stemmed when he sees the beast begin to _smile_ as Tifa hovers in front of his face.

Tifa shakes in front of him. The beast hums.

“Perhaps it is not my place to say, but it is what I have always believed, my lady,” he says. “A princess you are now, but in due time, you will be the queen.”

Tifa continues shaking, almost so hard she vibrates. She comes forward and taps the beast’s nose. He huffs, shaking his mane.

“It is certainly good to see you once again, Tifa.”

Tifa twirls in the air, circling around the beast three times before she lands atop his head in a gentle gesture before she settles away from him.

“Has it truly been two centuries? Has time flown by us so quickly?” the beast asks.

Tifa swivels, swaying like a hammock. Her light dims before brightening.

Cloud blinks, staring at the red creature up on his pedestal. Two centuries? That can’t be right. From the small memory bank Cloud was allowed to keep, the Rot had been around for only half that time—only one hundred years in the human world. That had been the entire reason the princess had been broken in the first place.

Cloud’s mind swims. Could that memory be wrong? Could it have been corrupted when the king erased the rest of them?

“Perhaps we should count our lucky stars,” the creatures continues. “Your choice could have eluded us for five or twenty lifetimes more. Now, however,” he says, his eye roving to Cloud. “Your choice of mortal must pass his trials. Shall he overcome them?”

Tifa bounces up and down. She swirls and falls back down to Cloud’s level, tapping his cheek in answer.

Cloud’s hands twist against the leather of his sword’s hilt. He frowns up at the beast, a streak of anger burning underneath his confusion.

“Enough talk,” Cloud states, his blood humming. “What is the trial?”

The beast tilts his head at him. One of his ears twitch back.

“Impatient, I see. But sturdy. You’ve killed on my lands, already. I felt their deaths as it happened.” He lowers his head for a moment, as though in respectful silence, before lifting it again. His eye captures Cloud’s face. “I knew of your arrival the moment Tifa had chosen you, Cloud Strife, son of Alek Strife, and brother to no one.”

Swallowing, Cloud tries to remain unbothered by the beast knowing him without formal introduction. He should not be surprised. The name of his father means nothing to him, and it doesn’t matter in his purpose. Names are only that, and nothing stirs in his mind except a black slate. Either way, it makes Cloud even angrier at the lack of knowledge.

“Who are you, then?” Cloud asks. “A fiend? A ruler?”

The beast’s ears twitch again. “You are a curious one. This canyon has not deterred you. The magic has yet to choke you. You inquire.” He shakes his mane. “I am no ruler, but I am a leader. As you have been chosen by the princess, so have I been chosen by my fellow Reckoning of this canyon.”

At that, two of the feline creatures appear, climbing up on either tower flanking the beast. One sits proudly, arching its neck and staring down at Cloud with skeptical, sharp eyes. The other merely sprawls across the broken platform of the tower, flicking its tail in a lazy weave.

“I am Nanaki, son of Seto and Quala, brother of the coeurls and friend of the behemoths. I am the guardian of this dessert canyon and leader of this tribe. Most importantly,” he says, “I am the protector of courage. I deign you worthy in this conquest, because if you cannot complete this trial, hope for the rest of our world is voided until the next knight is chosen.”

Cloud nearly bristles at the words. The king’s words echo in his mind. _You will only succeed._

“There won’t be another knight. There will only be _me_ ,” he growls.

“That remains to be seen,” Nanaki answers. He tips his head toward the two felines at his side. “You have experienced the wrath of coeurls. Their glares will petrify you. Their shocks will paralyze you.”

Cloud feels the residual tingling in his left forearm, and he shakes his hand. He gives a sneer toward the coeurls at Nanaki’s side. They stare back.

“Roars from the behemoths will stun you. One powerful blow will break you into a million grains of sand, and you will be part of our dessert floor forever.”

Cloud has heard words like this before. It is a tactic to sow fear in him before the fight even starts. They are harmless and hollow, and Cloud steels himself against them as he’s been trained. His blood is hot with the anticipation of a fight, and his overruling anger begins to seize the rest of him.

“I don’t need your introduction to the beasts of your world, Nanaki,” Cloud states, his voice gruff. “Give me the trial and be done with it.”

Tifa lands on his shoulder, and a ripple of warm energy seeps into his skin. Cloud wants to hate the action, but his anger is too blunted by her to hold onto his frustration.

Nanaki stares at him for a moment. “Very well, knight. The trial begins now.” His tail brightens, and the flame expands in a large, wicked inferno. It travels down Nanaki’s tail like a fuse, consuming his body into glowing embers. “Stay alive, Cloud Strife,” he says, his voice echoing across the canyon. His low growl bounces off the rocks. “Find your courage.”

The flames burn up, and Nanaki is gone. The ground shakes and rumbles, the sands rising up off the canyon floor like plumes of smoke. Cracks form along the dirt and the rocks, and the two coeurls dash off, disappearing into the maze of the canyon.

A roar shatters the air. The ruins of the temple burst apart, crumbling to pieces. A large monster appears from behind it, its claws scraping against the stones underfoot. They disintegrate into pools of loose sediment.

A behemoth, Cloud immediately knows, staring at the foot-long fangs and the powerful tail whipping around behind it. It smacks into the tower Nanaki had been sitting upon, and it breaks in half, clattering to the ground.

Saliva collects in its jowls, its eyes a ruby red. They gleam as they rove over the area, eyes immediately landing on Cloud. It braces its claws in a wide stance, rears back, and roars. His mouth splits open, the spit flying out. When it lands on the sands, clumps of the sediment sizzle and blacken. Its tongue is gray and curling, long enough to wrap around Cloud’s neck and hang him.

Nanaki had not lied about the roar. It curdles Cloud’s blood and shakes his bones. He clenches his palms around the hilt of his sword, but he is momentarily paralyzed and unable to do anything but watch the monster set its sights on him.

Cloud breathes out, noticing Tifa’s orb is still latched to his shoulder.

“You’ll stay with me, then?” he asks.

Tifa’s orb slides across his shoulder and takes her place behind his ear, molding around it like a cuff as she had before. A gentle pull of adrenaline begins to course through him, and Cloud nods, trying not to think about the help she’s offering.

“Thanks.”

With that, Cloud runs toward the behemoth.

The behemoth takes two long strides before he stops. When Cloud comes upon it, it slashes across the ground with one paw, claws extended. Cloud easily dodges it, rolling underneath. He swings his sword up at the tough, corded flesh of his front limb, and the beast screeches in pain. It paralyzes Cloud again, and it turns its body in a forceful twist. The tail swings out from behind him and slaps Cloud across the ribcage. He flies across the canyon, landing in an ungraceful tumble.

Huffing, Cloud pushes himself into a kneel. The behemoth is bleeding from the underside of its front forearm, but it hardly looks like a scratch. The blood is a shade darker than its purple skin, reminding him of the color of a bruise.

It screeches again, and Cloud winces. He grits his teeth and tries to stand as the behemoth begins sprinting toward him. The ground rumbles in a quake underneath its heavy, lumbering weight, and Cloud tries to shake the residual paralysis out of him. His heart pummels in his chest as the behemoth rapidly closes the distance between them. Hissing under his breath, Cloud closes his eyes for a moment before bracing himself. He tenses his muscles. He wills them to come back to life for him before the behemoth rips him open.

A pulse of energy rains through his body. His right ear burns, and Cloud’s breath shudders through him with a rippling of force. His eyes open immediately, and the behemoth is less than ten yards away. Everything in him—his limbs, his hands, his stomach—is struck with heat. It must be Tifa’s magic. It’s different than just his adrenaline. It is hotter and bolder, like a more evolved species of sensation.

As he burns and burns, Cloud doesn’t think when he pushes off the ground from his kneel. He jumps up into the air, high enough to surpass the head of the behemoth. Its eyes follow him, the mouth curling up in a growling snarl. It emits another low roar, and Cloud feels his limbs shake as he flips through the air, but this time, the roar isn’t strong enough to combat the heat flooding through his bones.

He feels a power in him that is unlike anything he has felt before.

The behemoth pushes its giant paws into the ground, sliding to a stop from its sprint. Cloud circles above its head, yelling as he falls from his arc. He brings his sword down in a flash of hot steel, slicing into the black mane and thick skin across its neck.

It shrieks from the blow. Cloud lands on its back, and his limbs begin to shaking harder against the paralysis. His lips curl into a scowl, and he tightens his hold on the hilt of his sword. One of his hands dart out to grab hold of the fur of the mane, and the beast begins to buck. It jerks its head from side to side, and Cloud holds on as hard as he can, his body flinging left and right. Giving up on shaking, the behemoth continues to buck and run, growling in frustration. Cloud brings his legs over the top of him, straddling its spine. He brings his sword up before the beast jerks again, and Cloud loses his focus and his grip, clenching his fists around its fur before he falls off the side.

It only takes a few deliberate movements to fling Cloud off its flank, and he lands on his side on the ground several yards away. He loses his breath momentarily from the impact, coughing before spitting and turning his gaze on the behemoth.

It paws at the ground, digging its claws into the dirt and allowing a low growl to reverberate through the air. Cloud’s hands tremble, but he’s able to push himself up and readjust his hold on his sword. He trails his eyes over the beast, noting the most vulnerable areas, like the underside of its belly, the space along its neck, and the superior joints of its limbs. He had almost severed the spine when he was atop the thing, but it’s too wild for a good, clean stab through the vertebrae. Cloud thinks he might be able to slide underneath it and puncture the belly. If he’s good enough, he might be able to slice the throat.

Cloud does what he knows he’s best at in the seconds before the behemoth makes its move. He calculates the different directions he can jump, dodge, or counter. It likes to sweep, either with its claws or the tail. It’s agile, but its bulk slows it down. If he can time it right…

Cloud locks eyes with the beast. Its glare is red and bloody, its pupils wide and black. Its jowls hang from its jaw like loose curtains, and it huffs. It stamps its claws into the ground, making the earth tremble beneath its feet. When it stops, it widens its stance, opens up its fanged mouth, and lets out a terrible, murderous roar.

The hair on the back of Cloud’s neck stands on end. His spine straightens, his thighs quiver. He still feels the lingering power from Tifa in his bones, heightened and thick with heat, and there is a battle raging in his bloodstream. Half of him wants to stiffen and become static, following the path to complete paralysis. The other half wants to run and jump and twist out of his entire being to _move_.

A trickle, like fresh spring water, runs along the thin skin of his eyelids. It is soothing and refreshing, and Cloud swallows. His lungs become unrestricted. A deep breath flows out of him, and the harsh contrasts of the cool trickling and the heat of his bones overcome everything else. The roar and growls the behemoth creates do not bother him any longer. He hangs onto that contrast, and it rams up his throat as he runs toward the beast. His own shout rips through him as he jumps, the beast sprinting forward to meet him. It swings its claw up in a wild attempt to swat him away, but Cloud slashes his sword at the paw. It slices through the joints, and half the claw twirls into the air, hitting the sandy ground with a thud. The behemoth emits a strangled cry, stuttering back a step from the wound.

As Cloud descends from his blow, he reaches a hand out to grab onto one of its curled horns, using the momentum to swing onto its neck. The behemoth turns and twists, shaking his mane with such a violent force that Cloud has no other choice but to fold and tangle his gloved fingers into its long, matted mane.

With his other arm, he raises his sword above his head and grunts, using as much strength as he can muster from the heat and chill colliding underneath his skin. He does his best to pierce the sword into its neck. He hopes to injure it enough to slow it down, but he also uses it as another handhold from the vicious and unrelenting jerks.

As soon as the sword slides into the tendons of its throat, the monster’s roar becomes haggard and gurgling. He shakes two more wild times before the energy begins to fade. Its breathing is labored, and Cloud is swathed in its dark, blackened blood. It sprays over him in a rainstorm, thick and rank with the smell of metal and gunpowder.

His hand begins to slip from the hilt of his sword, and Cloud gives up on it, reaching instead for the mane. He hauls himself up the best that he can, groaning against the strain and the continued and half-hearted shaking from the beast. As Cloud rights himself, he watches the blood form puddles across the canyon floor. The behemoth circles and swivels, reaching its maimed paw up at his head in a weak attempt at brushing Cloud off its neck. Its roar is strangled as it misses Cloud, and its intact front paw slips in wet sand. It careens and tries to stand taller, but Cloud feels it trembling, the blood gushing out of itand curling around the steel of Cloud’s sword.

Its legs begin to buckle a minute later, its body giving up the fight. Cloud continues to hang on, but he nearly loses his grip as the beast speaks.

“You have given me—a slow death,” it rasps, the growl coated with its effort. Its voice is low and rumbling, the tone of an earthquake. “A merciless warrior—for a worthy cause.” It takes one shuddering breath. “I am filled with honor to be—part of the sacrifice.”

It folds further into the sands on the ground, and Cloud belatedly realizes his hands tangled within the beast’s mane are shaking.

Tifa’s orb appears in front of Cloud, and it falls down to the front of the beast’s face. She touches its snout, glowing a brilliant blue.

“I return—to the earth—gladly,” it bellows. “Stay merciless, warrior. Free our princess. Free our world.”

Cloud feels the moment the behemoth’s soul leaves it. Its body stills. The blood continues to soak into the sands and red dirt underneath them, expanding outward like a stain. In the moments after, the purple skin of the beast begins glowing, breaking up into threads. Its muscles, tendons, and bones begin vanishing into a decadent, soft light, dissipating up from the ground and toward the sky. Eventually, Cloud’s feet touch the ground, and the only remaining pieces of the beast are the pools of blood surrounding them. Cloud’s sword slips into the sand, and he steps around the stains in the ground to retrieve it. He stares at the glow encompassing his sword and watches as the blood and viscera leave it, as well, disappearing into the air. It begins to shine, as clean as the first day he received it.

He’s fought countless fiends on the plains of his homeland. He’s fought hundreds of battles, both simple and taxing, throughout his tests to become a knight.

Never has a beast talked to him. A death has never been so vulnerable or... _grateful._

Oddly shaken at the thought, he clenches his fists and grits his teeth. Tifa hovers in front of his face, and she comes forward to tap his cheek. She bounces before him, her glow gentle but dazzling.

 _Stay merciless,_ the beast's voice rumbles in his head. The heat in his body and the chill around his eyes begins to fade. Suddenly feeling a barrage of uncertainty, Cloud glares at a bloodied patch of sand.

“You shouldn’t help me, Princess. You shouldn’t need to help me. I—“

She interrupts him by touching the hollow of his throat. She flits away and shakes from side to side.

She’s telling him _no._ Frowning, Cloud opens his mouth.

“Tifa—“

A deep shaking in the ground halts his words.

“One last trial remains. This is the true test. This is the true battle.”

It is Nanaki’s voice. It is both at once flooding the air surrounding him and deeply embedded into his ears. Cloud glances around but sees nothing except the rocky formations of the canyon cliffs, the dirt, and the wind blowing red and golden sand across the ground.

“May your sword strike true and your courage reign your body, Cloud Strife,” he says.

With that, the earth cracks and shifts. The ground separates between his feet, and he must jump toward one moving shelf of land before falling into the pit that forms below.

In a shattering scream, a giant rock, filled with sand and lava and stone, emerges from the splitting, widening maw of the ground. It shifts and blurs until it forms a torso, a head, and four large, ever-shifting limbs. A face forms—a mouth, a jaw, three eyes—before blurring into sand and stone.

“Kill the Titan, and a piece of our princess will be freed,” Nanaki says, his words weaving across the plain.

The monster—the Titan—pounds its rocky fists into the earth, its eyes finding Cloud before they shift back into stone.

Cloud steels himself from the magnitude of the beast. It is a hundred times larger than the behemoth. It towers over him like a skyscraper, inching up toward the wispy clouds in the creamy, pale color of the sky. Magma spills from its shoulders and forms a lace of veins into its arms and across its chest. It trickles into its torso, falling into the black hole of the formed abyss. It seems to span miles and miles. Unending.

 _Courage,_ Cloud thinks, bringing his sword in front of him. In the face of the Titan, he wonders if he’s ever had any to begin with.

A trembling shake torpedoes through the ground, and one of the Titan’s fists swings toward Cloud.

Cloud expels a breath, running to meet it.

Before he strikes with his sword, he wonders if he’ll find it.


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your support, everyone! I hope you continue to enjoy the madness of whatever this story is becoming. <3
> 
> Thanks Somebodys_Nightmare. Have my children or whatever.
> 
> Happy reading!

Cloud flies through the air. He lands in a plume of dust and dirt, and it finds its way into his mouth. It paints the grooves of his teeth, and he grimaces against the pain in his ribs. He looks up at the gigantic, overwhelming body of the Titan, whirling and shifting from loosened sand and sediment to compacted stone that’s as unbreakable as steel. Threads of magma slither along the grooves of its rocky abdomen, and its face flutters in and out of sight.

Its blows continuously strike him. Cloud either dodges and avoids the ponderous, deadly strikes of its arms or tries his hand at impaling them with his sword. So far, all he’s been able to do is ricochet off the stone of its muscled limbs, flying off and landing in the surrounding canyon floor of the battlefield. The Titan remains inside the crack in the earth, unable to move from its home but not needing to. Its stationary position seems to serve it well in the fight, and Cloud winces as he pushes himself up, another pulse of energy expanding into his body from Tifa. Every punishing impact onto the ground is followed by a magical balm from her. At first, Cloud was too surprised at receiving them to care about how he _felt_ about receiving them. For it being his _true_ test, he had hoped to show her he was powerful enough without her magic or her help. 

His pride chafes every time she sends a flutter of it down his neck. Now, after his seventh blow to the ground, he detests that he might need them to get through this. They keep him from focusing on the spots that litter his vision, from chasing the darkness that lines the edge of his sight. It feels like another failure, another _weakened_ part of him. A terrible, wicked claw of anger assaults his stomach.

Cloud pushes himself up to his feet. He glares at the monster, and it echoes what can only be a laugh at the sight of him. It rumbles across the rocks and sand of the canyon, the sun bathing it in milky, creamsicle light.

Cloud watches its torrential movements. His limbs rain sand down on the ground, the earth breaks underneath his feet in a web of cracks. Cloud observes it for vulnerabilities, but its eyes, when they appear, only seem to glow with energy and amusement. A building anger strikes against the inside of Cloud’s sternum, almost as painful as when he lands on his ribs against the ground. What weakness could sediment and stone have? What areas on a man, equivalent to this beast, would be tender and vulnerable? Cloud mentally flips through all of his training and studying. Everything he learned from those scrolls and yellowed pages, all of the written tests and attempts at learning the unknowns of magic…it seems fragmented and useless, now. 

The magma slides and forms trails, glowing and gleaming a white-hot yellow and violet. It solidifies then crumbles into sand, only to reform into lava and ash. Two of its arms move and stretch toward Cloud, and he’s spurred on to begin another run to avoid the assault. One hand swipes to grab him, but it is slow and deliberate with its size. Cloud is able to slip underneath it. The other hand claps the ground right beside where Cloud lands, narrowly missing the chance to smash Cloud like a mosquito. 

Cloud’s heart thunders in his chest at the impact of the Titan’s hand, his ears ringing from the proximity of the blow. The slam creates a small vacuum, and it absorbs all the air in his lungs. He’s left breathless, his eyes wild, watching for every movement and action that could be an opening, that could be _something—_

A third limb comes across the space, and Cloud is too busy with the rush of blood in his ears, his heart beating, and his eyes focusing on everything else to dodge in time. He is smacked in his side, sent flying into the air for the eighth time. The eighth _goddamn time._

As soon as he lands in the dirt, his first thought is how _sick_ of this he is. He’d roll his eyes if he wasn’t about to pass out from the pain in his side. 

A plume of heat runs through him, distracting him long enough to stand. He growls at it. 

“Stop _helping_ me,” he shouts, leaning for a moment on his broadsword. “You’ve done enough.”

The heat becomes a trill, like a hurried tapping along his chest. It nearly feels like a reprimand. 

Grunting, he eyes the head of the Titan. He observes all of the rocky crags and cliffs that form its arms and torso. If he can get close enough, he can climb it. He can jump from rock to rock, hold on when it tries to throw him off, just like the behemoth.

Another trill vibrates against him. He ignores it. 

He attempts the climb twice. The first time, he reaches close enough to the torso to jump and grasp a handhold on its hip. The Titan immediately turns his skin into magma, and Cloud nearly loses multiple layers of his skin. The second time, he tries a different route, quickening his climb and reaching for different handholds. The Titan must humor him for a time because he simply flicks Cloud off him like a bug. 

He is able to roll into a decent land, avoiding smacking into the earth with his shoulder or hip, and he comes to stop in a kneel. His teeth gnash together, exhaustion and anger roiling through him. 

The trill becomes difficult to shake off. Cloud pushes his shoulder back, doing his best to refuse it. 

“No,” he says under his breath. 

At that, something happens. There is a shift in the world. When Cloud begins to run forward again, his limbs become leaden. They are too heavy to rush forward. The Titan before him freezes, as if locked in time. Cloud’s chest tightens, and he can hardly breathe. He is stuck in an abrupt, solid casing of air. 

Tifa’s orb disengages from his ear and floats in front of him, right in line with his vision. There is a flicker, then two, and her orb transforms into a hazy embodiment of…of the _princess._

She is white-washed. She is devoid of color, leeched, with her lines and shadows pure white and black. It is so different from the portrait in the castle, her eyes and hair black without shine, her skin and the rest of her body incomplete and lifeless. 

She is a ghastly specter, and yet, somehow, she hangs onto an ethereal beauty. She is wraith-like, but her power vibrates in the space between them. Her eyes take him in, as deadly black as her father’s in this form. Cloud can nearly feel his stomach quiver from her mere presence. 

_The anger. The frustration. It rules you, Cloud._

Her voice is the wind spinning through the canyon cliffs. It lacks tone, but he understands it all the same. 

“…I need to do this,” he manages.

 _Alone?_ She asks, tilting her head at him. _Why?_

“This is _my_ trial,” he says.

 _No,_ she answers. _Our trial. One thing must be clear, Cloud Strife. We are better together than apart. You must see this. You must know it._

Her words are not to be rebutted or argued. Cloud swallows, his chest crushed underneath her power. 

_I am heavily weakened and cannot hold this form for long,_ she says, shifting closer. Cloud wants to step back but is unable. His heart beats in a terrible rhythm in his chest, and she stops in front of him. _To defeat this Titan, the winning hand lies within where to strike. What place is the hardest? The most resilient? Where does courage stem from?_

She glances behind her to the monster, remaining in a temporary stasis. She looks back at Cloud, and his throat tightens under her black stare. 

_Courage is the rival to fear. One does not exist without the other._

He eyes her, and she eyes him back. 

_Where does your fear lie?_ She queries. It is a simple question, but it is as profound as the Titan’s hand slamming and quaking the earth. _Where does it build?_

Had someone asked where courage stemmed from yesterday, Cloud would have answered the heart. The heart holds everything. Courage of the heart, as the saying goes. Courage of the spirit. 

Tifa’s bodily form begins to flicker, and the Titan’s arms begin to shift. It is slow as molasses, but she is losing her hold. She fades out before filling back in, and one more whistle of wind crowds the space. 

_Where is the foundation of fear, Cloud? Find it, and there courage will be._

She glows, effervescent and blinking into a harsh, white light. In a second, she disappears, enclosed again in her orb. It darts to the cuff of his ear, surrounding it and holding on tight. The Titan comes fully back to life, and Cloud takes in a deep, revitalizing breath. He is no longer suffocating, and his limbs, after being encompassed in heavy lead, feel lighter than they have in weeks. 

A blast of warmth shuttles through him, and it almost feels like the last word. He huffs, shaking his head. He turns his eyes back to the Titan. 

His fear. Its foundation. Cloud rallies, feeling a flood of energy through his limbs. His anger continues to linger, his annoyance and his frustration, like a pool deep in his belly. It heats up like a cauldron over a fire pit. 

The Titan’s three eyes rove over Cloud. They turn to sand, eroding and solidifying into rock. They transform into caverns, the holes black and depthless. A craggy line appears where a mouth should be, widening, handfuls of rock crumbling and crashing to the ground. It makes a tremulous rumble, and Cloud takes a moment before realizing it is laughter. The widening mouth is a _smile._

The anger increases within him, bubbling in his stomach. 

A dead whisper darts through his mind. It is so sharp, Cloud can’t help but wince. 

_You’re a child,_ it says. _All bluster and bravado, but you are weak._

Cloud shakes away the pain in his head from the words. His fist tightens on the hilt of his broadsword. 

_Even with the princess, you do not possess the capability to fell me._

Cloud presses his feet into the dirt. He stares at the Titan, catching its cavernous eyes with his own. His stomach lurches with the words. 

_You are weak._

Something pulses in the back of his mind. It is cradled in darkness, and Cloud can’t see it—can’t see why those words bother him. He can’t look past the abyss in his memories. 

All he knows is that he can _feel_ it. It’s a hot poker in his stomach. It is a slow drip of rage. 

His eyes rove over the beast again. Tifa’s words push against him, and she taps at his ear. The foundation of fear. 

_You are weak._

He drags his sword across the sand, holding it up in front of him. He remembers his training. He is _not_ weak. He will _never_ be weak again. 

He begins to run forward, one of the Titan’s four hands slapping at the ground. It rumbles, but Cloud doesn’t lose his footing. Another arm swipes at him, but he jumps over it. It harmlessly passes underneath him. 

_You’re a hollow shell._

Cloud grunts as he lands near the fissure in the earth. The body of the Titan plunges deep into the core of the world, and Cloud can spy a faint glow billowing up from far below. Perhaps it’s the magic that the Titan uses. Cloud continues running, dodging blows. The Titan sprays magma, and Cloud rolls and jumps to avoid them. Rocks fall, chunks twice his size and larger. Cloud spins and darts out from under their shadows, nearly losing his balance every time they crash and explode against the earth. 

The Titan whispers, _You may not remember, but I do. I see._

Cloud sprints out from under another hand. Sand whips in a cyclone around him, forcing him onto his back. He pushes through his heels as another rock hurtles towards him, crashing close enough that Cloud is pelted with shattered pieces of it. 

_You didn’t come here by merit of your own._

Cloud expels a fast breath, eyeing the fissure and the elongated torso of the Titan. It is muscled and layered with sediment, but the area where the Titan connects with the earth is thin. It is a steel rod, covered with stone and sand, but it is sturdy. It does not sway. 

_Did your human leaders not tell you, knight?_

Cloud glances up at the face of the Titan, curving its neck to stare down at him. Magma pools in the trench of its mouth, drizzling out like drool. 

Cloud doesn’t know what the Titan means. It is certainly a distraction, but breathless, hot, and frantic, Cloud snarls, “What are you talking about?”

He evades another rock. His skin stings with a small spray of lava, and he curses. 

_Did they not explain why they chose you?_

Gritting his teeth and flinging lava off his skin, Cloud’s eyes fall to the rod holding up the Titan. A flutter hits his ear. 

It looks like a stem. 

“It’s a lottery,” Cloud spats, beginning to run toward the line of the rod. Sand begins to cover it once more, thickening it. “They don’t choose.”

There is another rumble, another deep, deep laughter. 

_Yes, they do._

The fissure cracks, discouraging Cloud’s advances. He nearly smirks to himself. Good. That means he must be right. The foundation. It is so obvious, now. Cloud hisses at how he hadn’t seen it before. 

He times his jumps between the splitting earth. It begins to fall away into the depthless cracks, consuming them to the core of the world like the longest swallow. Closer, now. He’s fifteen feet away, twenty at most. He continues to run and jump, concentrating on the firmly packed areas of rock. 

“Well, if they _did_ choose,” Cloud pants, grunting as he lands on another patch of earth. He nearly slips, and he grasps onto the edge of it, pulling himself up only to quickly dodge a falling boulder. “They must have been desperate to pick _me.”_

The Titan quakes a laugh. 

_Desperate and hopeless._

Cloud is struck by that. He pauses, and it almost costs him. The earth shifts, and he topples over the edge, jutting out his swordless hand to catch the edge. He digs his fingers into it, pressing through the sand to find solid dirt and rock. He swings his sword up and jams it into the dirt, hauling himself up with a grunt. 

The earth immediately begins to fall into the abyss, and he blindly jumps. His feet wobble and shake, and he can’t gain his footing before he falls to a knee for balance. 

The trembling of the earth is increasing. It is becoming relentless. Now without the momentum of his jumps, Cloud can hardly stand without falling off the side of the patch of earth and into the hole of the land. 

“Hopeless?” he puffs, his words stolen by a sudden gust of wind. “There were others—“

The earth shifts, and Cloud feels a pulse of Tifa’s heat cascade through him. It is enough to stop his limbs from shaking—just enough for him to regain his footing. He takes the chance, too abruptly confused to care about his still ripening anger. 

_Others? No,_ the Titan whispers in his mind. _You were the_ last.

The word is an arrow through his temple. Rage chases the shock of pain, and Cloud squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. The earth continues to shift, and he must carry on—he is closer, now. He is two swings of his sword away from that stem, that _root._

Each jump he makes jolts his system with sharpness. The earth feels like shards, cutting through the soles of his boots and into his feet. He yowls with each landing, noticing the slick sheen of sweat that drips into his eyes, burning his vision. 

Just one more jump—one more and he’s there. 

He can’t have been the last, he thinks. He can’t have been. There were others—so many others. 

Tifa’s power flutters against him again, and his dizzying, entangled thoughts are soothed and calmed. He breathes heavily. Not now. Later. He’ll have to think on it later. 

_You are weak, but you were the last,_ the Titan bellows. It pushes against Tifa’s magic like a shove. _You are weak, and you will never embrace your fears. You won’t defeat me because you are created from broken branches and whittled wood._

The words sever something inside of Cloud. He almost hears the snap. The rage that had been simmering blinds him in red and black and yellow. All the sweeping, powerful colors, all the fire and heat. He becomes lava, erupting from his pores. 

_You are nothing. This rage will turn you into ash._

Cloud shouts, and he can reach out and touch the foundation. It is thin compared to the rest of the Titan, but it is still as wide as a house. He swings his broadsword—on _fire,_ he’s _on fire—_ and he removes a chunk. One single brick of it. He swings again and again. His arms vibrate with the power of the blows.

The Titan finally groans. It is not in amusement or filled with sharp whispers, but it is agonized. They are high, like screeching whimpers. The earth shudders. It ripples like a wave, but it is a convulsion and not anything like the strategic crumbling from before, as Cloud was jumping and weaving and dodging. It is uncontrolled and wild. Cloud is pushed up into the air, but he continues to attack. His assault is unrelenting, and as uncontrolled as the earth. He cannot stop not because he doesn’t want to, but because he _can’t._

 _You are weak,_ the words ring through his ears. _You are nothing._

The Titan’s arms scramble to slap him away, but Cloud avoids the hits. He slips under them and jumps over them. He feels possessed, wholly taken with the redness. The burning embers. 

The Titan thinks he will turn to ash? Well then, let him turn to ash. 

He doesn’t care. He’s weak. He’s nothing. Nothing and no one. 

A ripple of warmth flows through his heated limbs. It is a different, tempered heat compared to the possession. Cloud ignores it, but it pulses, again and again. 

_Where does your fear lie?_

He’s nothing and no one. He’s alone. 

He’s weak, and _nothing_ can change that. 

He doesn’t feel the tears as they fall down his cheeks. He is so ensconced in anger and rage, he cannot experience anything else. Rocks hit his arms and his legs, sand cuts into his hair, and the heat blurs his eyes, but there is only the stem of the Titan, the root of his being, and the necessity to severe it in half. 

The earth wears away. All of it begins to fall into the abyss below, and Cloud chases the rest of them, running and slicing. When the last of the earth falls, there is still so much left of the foundation. It is still sand and magma and hot trails of fire, but Cloud gives a final shout and plunges his sword as deeply and viciously into it as he can, holding onto the hilt to keep from falling into the chasm below. He pushes and pushes, yelling as it slides and inches further. When enough of the rock dissipates, he discovers a glowing white stream underneath. He grunts, pushing the sword just enough to clip the white, and the convulsions around him turn into shrieks of misery. 

Cloud knows instantly. It is the true root of the Titan’s being. It is the core of its spirit. 

And he will break it. 

With one last shove, Cloud twists the blade. 

Everything shatters. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by this song: [mirrored heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y6yXR8YEdI) by FKA twigs  
> Story inspired by these games: Ori and the Will of the Wisps (first and foremost)  
> Shadow of the Colossus, Legend of Zelda, Hollow Knight -- all great games I highly recommend 
> 
> Come join me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/spaceOdementia)~


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